Color of Safety, The

The industry's workforce is getting grayer as veteran miners approach retirement, and greener as new hires come onboard. Will the changing complexion of the industry affect future safety technology?

Despite a gradual but steady decrease in mining employment in most industrialized nations, the scope of the industry's safety concerns appears to be expanding. Twenty years ago, for example, who would have thought that the reliability of a GPS system could have life-or-death consequences in a mining application? But today, GPS guidance is at the heart of truck dispatch systems that, in some cases, control mine-truck traffic at dangerous intersections, underpasses or blind corners, where a system malfunction could result in a collision. Future autonomous or semi-autonomous mining machines will require total guidance-system reliability and availability to avoid unacceptable safety risks.

Noise, vibration and other workplace hazards are receiving more attention from regulatory agencies, and underground mining is likely to become the dominant method of extracting ore due to various factors (see "Driving Mining Underground," p. 60), bringing new problems. As existing and future mines go progressively deeper to reach ore, additional hazards will be encountered. New technology will be required to support safe mining in this environment.

From a non-technological viewpoint, not only is the mining workforce in industrialized countries shrinking-it's also changing color. In North America, for example, it's simultaneously becoming both grayer and greener. Miners that were hired during the boom days of the 1970s are now nearing retirement, and overall the workforce's collective age is skewed sharply toward the high end of the scale. In the U.S., the median age for hardrock miners in 2004 was 44 years, and almost 46 for coal miners; in Canada's Sudbury district alone, underground mine operators such as Inco Ltd. and Falconbridge expect between 500 and 1,000 of its most experienced miners to retire in the coming years.

Hiring lagged in the industry down cycles that occurred in the 1980s and late 1990s, leading to a significant age gap between senior workers and young miners that have been recently hired to meet the demands of the current boom. The result: A workforce largely comprising two age groups with markedly different demographic characteristics, physical abilities and learning preferences-quite possibly, a training or safety manager's worst nightmare.

A smaller, age-segregated workforce may also pose a challenge for designers and manufacturers of all types of mining-related equipment-not just safety products. In light of ever-stricter health and safety regulations, suppliers may have to consider even more carefully the best approach for making their products operationally safe for the widest possible demographic spectrum of mine workers, as well as for inexperienced workers in remote, undeveloped locales. Although increasingly sophisticated technology often provides a solution to many safety-related problems, it's not always the final answer.

Volvo Construction Equipment, for example, points out in a brochure titled Safety is Not an Accident that building intrinsically safer machines has not eliminated worksite accidents involving mobile equipment. Some mishaps are the direct result of machine problems but the majority is not. In response, Volvo CE established a Safety Council which has developed a customer-oriented approach that focuses on the interdependency of safe workplace planning and design, carefully controlled onsite traffic movement and other interactions between personnel, materials and machines, and the choice of equipment incorporating appropriate safety features. These may seem rather basic facts of site life, with well-established principles and practices available to be put in place. But accidents keep occurring and Volvo cites the U.K.'s Health and Safety Executive conclusion that 60% of worksite accidents can be attributed to choices made before work begins at a site.

Under the Influence

As another unexpected result of globalization, equipment manufacturers also can expect to encounter increasing regulatory influence from entities outside their legal domicile or market area, as their local, state, provincial or national health authorities study and perhaps adopt emerging safety-related standards proposed or imposed by agencies in other states-or countries.

The effect of workplace exposure to vibration is a case in point. The relationship between whole body vibration (WBV) and ubiquitous back pain is a significant element in current health and safety thinking, or that the resulting edicts are driving technology development-especially in vehicle seating. Presently, the relevant regulation in this matter is the European Union's Human Vibration Directive (HVD) on the minimum health and safety requirements regarding the exposure of workers to risks posed by physical agents (vibration). Although this only applies to EU member states, Bill Turman II of U.S.-based seating manufacturer Sears expects U.S. authorities to make similar provisions once the EU directive is in place.