Re:The Dangerous Business of Mining
by kevingadd on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @03:08AM
(#21822843)
Deaths aren't really the most important stat though. Miners often suffer significant health complications over the course of their life and those are not only unpleasant but expensive.
So you're looking for something closer to injuries than deaths, but you want them to either be significant or long-lasting injuries, probably? Like, black lung may not be the same as getting crushed by a cave-in but that doesn't make it nothing...
The industry in Australia is currently working through the early stages of the transition to autonomous mining, so that problem is well on the way to being put down for good. Although we more or less solved that problem years ago with a little backsliding recently [0].
That 'mining breeds misery' comment is simply not correct for Australia; most miners are pretty chipper at all the money they are making relative to everyone else. May as well say 'overly abundant food breeds misery' or 'computer games breed misery'.
[0] https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/bla...
A few stats: https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/statistics-and-research...
in Australia’s enormous mining industry in 2018, there were nine fatalities. The fatality rate was 3.7 per 100,000. This puts it ahead of most industries but substantially behind “Agriculture, forestry and fishing” at 11.2 or “Transport, warehousing and transport “ at 5.9.
For further perspective, the death rate in Australian mining injuries is several times less than the murder rate in Chicago (23.8) or even San Francisco (6.3).
So although mining is still an intrinsically dangerous occupation which puts your soft fleshy body in close proximity with all sorts of heavy, moving, unstable or explosive objects, safety training, equipment and procedures have improved a lot over the centuries.