Drop in China mine deaths, accidents for 2009

[Coventina]

Source: Washington Post

BEIJING -- The number of deaths in China's mining industry, the world's deadliest, fell 20 percent last year as more dangerous smaller mines were closed, a safety official said.

Zhao Tiechui, the head of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, said accidents caused 2,631 deaths - a decline of 22 percent, or 584 deaths, from the previous year, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday.

That works out to 7.2 deaths a day from 8.8 in 2008. The number of accidents also declined.

The number of fatalities is the lowest in years and a result of China's strenuous efforts to police its mining industry, Zhao told a national workplace safety conference in Beijing. China has closed or absorbed hundreds of smaller, often illegal private mines into state-owned operations, which are generally safer.

Zhao said small coal mines, which produce 35 percent of the country's coal, were responsible for 70 percent of the fatalities. A total of 1,088 small coal mines were closed last year, Xinhua reported.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/20/AR2010012000395.html

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If you want some idea about the grim life of China's coal miners, I highly recommend the movie "Blind Shaft". (I think it was made in 2003).

[Thothmes]

1. This is what American coal mines looked like

before John L. Lewis and UMW.

[ThomWV]

3. If you think its much better now you misunderstand coal mine safety statistics

On edit: Sorry, fat tumbs.

The thing is, yes the mines are safer, but the real reason you see so many fewer deaths from coal production today in our country is that there is a lot less deep mining then there ever used to be. Its all strip mined now, and that became much more the case when the western coal came on line. All that no-sulpher, low BTU coal out there with a couple of feet of overburden and then seams 30 feet thick. They mine that stuff with bulldozers, and that kills a lot less miners that crawling around underground in 20 inch seams.

[Thothmes]

4. We still mine coal in shafts in Kentucky, West Virginia and

western Virginia. True not as much as we did in the past, but each day thousands of miners in this country still enter those ready made black tombs to mine coal. Wyoming strip mines use very large scoop shovels to mine, not bull dozers.

[JVS]

2. They'll go back up when the economy needs the production of the small mines too.