UA News

Two UA units are collaborating on several projects to improve the health and safety of miners around the globe.

The Mining and Geological Engineering (MGE) Department and the Community, Environment and Policy Division in the College of Public Health currently are working together on three such programs, said J.R.M (Ros) Hill, an MGE adjunct professor who directs the department's health and safety program. They are:

• A certificate program in mining health and safety that will provide distance-learning courses to those working in the industry and others interested in learning more about health- and safety-related topics.

• A program to improve the health and safety of miners and mining communities in developing countries.

• A study of the risk management regulatory system used by the Australian mining industry compared to the compliance-based regulatory structure used in the United States.

Certificate Program
The certificate program, which is still being set up, will extend courses already offered at UA as well as create new ones targeted for those working in health-and-safety-related jobs in the mining industry, Hill said.

Mining engineering students now are required to take a class in mining health and safety and some of the topics from that class will be expanded to form certificate program courses. These include mine ventilation, illnesses and disease in mining, chemical exposures, basic epidemiology, environmental health, and other topics.

International Health and Safety Program
MGE/Public Health efforts to improve the health and safety of miners in developing countries started in 2001 with a Fogerty Grant through the National Institute of Health, Hill explained.

The program is a collaborative effort between MGE and the College of Public Health conducted through the International Center for Mining Health, Safety and the Environment that focuses on occupational health and safety, industrial hygiene, sustainable development and environmental remediation. It includes projects in the Philippines, Guyana Shield and sub-Saharan Africa.

The Philippine project was part of an international collaboration to evaluate the safety, health, and environmental effects associated with a mine disaster.

The Guyana Shield projects focused on environmental and health issues at mines in northern South America, specifically involving pollution from mercury and sediment loading in rivers in Guyana and Brazil.

The Sub-Saharan program includes collaborations between UA and the mining schools at the Universities of Zambia and Zimbabwe. UA faculty members have taught courses at the African schools and students from those schools have come to UA for training. All the noise- and dust-monitoring equipment taken to Africa by UA faculty members was left in country so the educational efforts could continue after UA faculty left, Hill added.

Australian/U.S. Injury Rates in Coal Mining
Between 1996 and 2003, lost-time injuries per 100,000 miners declined by 20 percent in the United States, but by 78 percent in Queensland and 52 percent in New South Wales, Hill said.

MGE and researchers from the Community Environment and Policy Division are trying to determine if differences between the Australian and U.S. regulatory approaches account for at least some of the gap in injury rates.

"This is a NIOSH-funded project, primarily being carried out in the College of Public Health with input from MGE," Hill said. NIOSH is the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

"There are many confounding factors that we haven't evaluated completely and we don't know how they effect the data," Hill explained. "For example, we don't know how the data is affected by mine size, since there are many more smaller mines in the U.S. than in Australia."

The project focuses on the change in lost-time injuries between 1996 and 2003. This covers the time in which Australia converted to a risk-based system, versus the U.S. compliance-based enforcement program.

Queensland implemented risk-based compliance in 1992 and revamped the system in 1994. It became law in Queensland in 1999. New South Wales started using the system in 1998 and it became law in 2002.

"In the risk-based system, tasks are evaluated and enforcement is based on how the miners comply with the way they are trained to do the task," Hill said. "In the United States, we have a list of rules and the rulebook basically says, "This is the way it will be done or you will be cited.'

"In Australia, they deal more with the specific task the miner is doing, rather than evaluating the mine as a whole," he added.