NIOSH Offers Free 'Safety Pays in Mining' Tool
The online tool allows mining companies to calculate the cost of injury claims and see how they could profitably spend the savings they'd realize from preventing injuries.
NIOSH is offering a new, online tool, "Safety Pays in Mining," which allows mining companies to calculate the cost of injury claims and see how they could profitably spend the savings they’d realize from preventing injuries. Dr. John Howard, the agency's director, highlighted it in his April 2017 "From the Director's Desk" newsletter about the agency's activities.
The free tool allows users to evaluate the most common types of injuries and work activities associated with them for 2015 by commodity, the cost of occupational injuries by type, the impact of the cost of occupational injuries on their company, and then how they could spend their savings from preventing injuries.
The tool displays direct costs for specific injuries and also estimates indirect costs stemming from an incident, including overtime for other workers to fill an injured worker's role, training costs for a replacement worker, and time spent using administrative resources to address the injury.
"Seeing the cost of injuries spelled out in dollars may help companies see that in mining, investing in safety pays," according to NIOSH, which thanked the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation for its input and feedback on the Safety Pays in Mining tool. It is based on the Safety Pays Program created by OSHA, and the estimated cost of an injury is calculated from data provided by the Ohio BWC and reflects the various costs of lost-time workers' compensation insurance claims. (The costs shown do not necessarily represent what a specific company directly pays, and the Ohio BWC makes no guarantees nor assumes any responsibility for the accuracy of any results obtained through the use of the data provided through this tool.)