The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is collecting data on the mining industry via a survey, which will be completed during June. “Since 1986, there has been little research on the demographics of the mining labor force, such as age, gender, job title, languages used, educational attainment, race, ethnicity, and years of mining experience,” NIOSH explains. “These data are needed to understand the risk of work-related injuries, disease and fatalities and to customize safety and health interventions for specific groups of the industry. These data also can be used to learn more about the underlying causes of work-related incidents and to identify ways to reduce their occurrence.”

The main objectives of the survey are to: collect basic information about mining operations; establish the demographic and occupational characteristics of mine operator employees for each mining commodity (i.e., coal, metal, nonmetal, stone, and sand and gravel); and estimate the number of independent contractor employees used by mining operations and their occupational characteristics. A total of 2,321 mining operations are being surveyed; they include sand and gravel, stone, nonmetal, metal and coal (surface and underground).

For more information on the survey, go to www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/statistics/survey.htm.