Commentary: 10 Years Later, Part 46 Still Confuses Inspectors
The Part 46 training rule has been around for more than a decade, but some MSHA inspectors still don’t get it. An inspector recently groused to plant management because he didn’t think first aid training should be a part of Part 46 refresher training.
Like a lawyer who hedges her bets, the inspector then took the position that if it was allowed, the instruction had to be done under the auspices of a recognized provider such as the American Red Cross. And the miners needed to carry certification cards.
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Part 46 Training
Submitted by safetylawyer on Mon, 01/30/2012 - 3:41pm.Amen, brother! I have had many questionable Part 46 citations issued to clients over the years, including situations where visitors to the site who are not engaged in any mining activities at all were still called "miners" in the citation, where the vendor/trucker exception under 46.2 was ignored (in defining who is a miner requiring comprehensive training versus a non-miner who needs site-specific training), etc. In addition, while I'm in the soapbox, MSHA really needs to do a technical correction concerning Part 46 and who can receive "newly hired experienced miner" training. When Part 46 was enacted, stating that the person had to have been employed as a miner as of 4/14/1999 or the person had to have at least 12 months of cumulative experience as of 10/2/2000 made sense (since the standard was finalized on 9/39/1999) so this required a year's experience. Now, however, to be an "experienced miner" you have to have 11 years experience due to the passage of time, simply because of a drafting error specifying a particular date rather than a "duration" of experience specification. MSHA, please fix this!