Difficult conditions caused divers to suspend their work temporarily last night at a West Virginia coal impoundment site.  They had been using torches to try and cut into the cab of a submerged bulldozer to recover the body of a miner.

MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere said the divers were unable to maintain an arc and were also significantly inhibited by water and slurry as they tried to cut a small hole in the top of the machine’s cab at Consol Energy’s Nolan Run coal impoundment facility in Harrison County. 

Want to test heat transfer through a garment to gauge how much you might perspire while wearing it?  No sweat.  NIOSH’s sweating thermal manikin can give you the answer.

The Institute’s National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory has acquired a manikin designed to “sweat” by releasing water through holes distributed evenly throughout the manikin’s surface when a certain temperature is reached.   Read more »

Defibrillators are coming to Pennsylvania’s coal mines.

The state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced Thursday that underground bituminous coal mines in the Keystone State will soon be required to install automated external defibrillators.  

In an official acknowledgement of the obvious, MSHA has formally listed a miner who remains unaccounted for after an impoundment failure six days ago in West Virginia as a mining-related fatality.

The listing came after MSHA posted a preliminary accident investigation report that for the first time explained the extent of the embankment failure Nov. 30 at Consol Energy’s Nolan Run coal slurry impoundment in Harrison County.

A mine safety website in the United Kingdom has issued an incident alert following the accidental release of a shell manufactured by Cardox International, Ltd. at a cement plant in the country.   Read more »

A union representing more than 200 Idaho silver miners is seeking over a year’s compensation for those workers who were laid off after MSHA closed their mine for safety reasons.

United Steelworkers (USW) Local 5114 brought a complaint for compensation on behalf of its members who have worked at Hecla Limited's Lucky Friday Mine in Mullan.  In a legal proceeding before Administrative Law Judge Richard Manning, the company asked that the complaint be dismissed.

The search continues today for the operator of a bulldozer that, along with two pickup trucks, slid into a coal impoundment pond in West Virginia following what MSHA described as a “massive failure” of an embankment.

The accident at about 12:15 p.m. Friday sent the bulldozer operator and two engineers standing on a platform at the Consol Energy, Inc. facility in Harrison County into the dam.  The engineers were quickly rescued and sent to area hospitals.  Both were released on Friday. 

Two aggregate operations that have experienced fatalities within the past year were targeted in impact inspections MSHA conducted in October, while a West Virginia coal operation received an unprecedented two impact inspections during the month.

Peabody Energy has announced it is closing a large underground coal operation in Illinois, in part due to safety concerns. 

In a statement released Tuesday, the St. Louis-based coal operator said it will permanently close its Willow Lake Portal because it "has failed to meet acceptable standards for safety, compliance and operating performance, and these ongoing issues make the operations unsustainable."  The mine is run by a subsidiary, Big Ridge, Inc.

Closure is slated to occur during the first quarter of 2013.  Some 400 miners will be affected.