IN THE NEWS
IRE and NICAR offer data, stories and tipsheets to help cover the latestCovering workplace safety
(updated Aug. 7, 2007)
Data
Workplace safety has been written about time and again. A prime source of information comes from the OSHA workplace safety database, available from the IRE and NICAR Database Library. The database contains a variety of workplace inspection and accident information, including hazardous substance accidents as well as violations for federally inspected companies in the U.S. and its territories. Current as of February 2005, the data includes more than 3 million records of OSHA inspections. To order the data, contact NICAR at 573-884-7711 or download an order form.
The Mine Health and Safety Administration also has data available:
MSHA's Data Retrieval System permits interested parties to retrieve mine overviews, accident histories, violation histories, inspection histories, inspector dust samplings, and operator dust samplings and employment/production data.
The Mine ID # for the Alma No. 1 Mine, operated by Massey Energy subsidiary Aracoma Coal, is 4608801.
The Mine ID # for the Sago Mine is 4608791.
Downloadable accident/injury data: "These 'self-extracting' files are the actual information (raw data) from the accident and injury MSHA Form 7000-2 filed with MSHA by mining operators and contractors as required under" federal regulations."
Federal Campaign Contributions
The Federal Elections Commission's database consists of campaign contribution information on all candidates seeking federal office and on all federal political action committees. A quick check shows executives of Massey Energy (parent company of the operator of Alma No. 1 Mine) made four contributions to various causes in 2004 election cycle. The database contains four tables, which include information about candidates and committees as well as individual contributor information and campaign contributions by PACs.
Tipsheets
Tipsheet #2819: Ken Ward Jr.'s tipsheet provides guidance on how to cover mines, noting that "there are more than 2,000 coal mines nationwide, but more than 12,500 metal/nonmetal mines." The tipsheet gives sources for starting out, including the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration Web site.
Tipsheet #2688: Seth Borenstein provides his PowerPoint presentation on investigating workplace safety. The presentation provides information about how the AP reported on the Sago mine disaster, along with helpful Web links to other stories on the subject. He also provides a number of lessons for reporters who are undertaking such projects.
Tipsheet #2639: Linda J. Johnson's tipsheet is a good resource for reporters covering a mining accident for the first time. The author suggests places to start the investigation, like the Mine Safety and Health Administration's website. Johnson also offers some tips to avoid common mistakes when covering mines.
Tipsheet #2629: Ken Ward Jr.'s tipsheet discusses how to use CAR to report on mining accidents. For instance, Ward lists various sources for safety records and then suggests how to analyze them. He also includes information about mine regulations and mining terminology.
Tipsheet #1387: Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette offers additional Web addresses and includes some info on workplace safety laws from Cornell University.
Tipsheet #2458: This tipsheet is about how to do an OSHA investigation without being overwhelmed. It includes advice about analyzing the data, as well as suggestions for making the data more manageable. The tipsheet ends with a list of Web resources for an OSHA project. (2005)
Tipsheet #2113 Justin Pritchard of The Associated Press gives tips for reporting on worker safety and lists government databases that can be used for analysis. He also gives ideas on the kind of sources that can be used for such stories. (2004)
Tipsheet #1608: From Natalya Shulyakovskaya of The Orange County Register, from the 2002 IRE Conference, including Web addresses of agencies and organizations involved in workplace safety issues, and a guide on how to report on OSHA activity.
More tipsheets can be found by searching the tipsheet database.
Stories
Story 22770: Ken Ward Jr. reports that "nearly 40 years after passage of the federal coal mine safety law, U.S. coal miners continue to die on the job because of widespread violations by coal companies and lax regulation by the government. And, while explosions and mine fires draw media and political attention, most coal miners die alone, one by one in roof falls and machinery accidents that could have been avoided if the operators they worked for complied with existing laws."
Story #17284: This 2000 series by R.G. Dunlop of The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal "exposed lax state enforcement of mine-safety violations." The reporter found that the Kentucky mining board "rarely used its full authority to revoke or suspend companies' mining licenses and miners' certifications," when hearings were held on mine-safety cases. The series focused also on the failure of the board to formally review "nearly 100 cases since 1990 in which Kentucky coal companies and/or supervisors were convicted of federal mine-safety violations." The investigation exposed cases of falsified tests detecting coal-dust levels, improper handling of explosives, illegal smoking underground and falsified safety training documents.
Story #19487: About a year and a half after federal regulators were supposed to release the results of a two-year study of mountaintop removal coal mining's environmental impacts, Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette published a series detailing the study's findings — after an FOI fight to obtain the report. The report revealed that "without tougher limitations, mountaintop removal would destroy more than 230,000 acres of Appalachian forests." (2002)
Story #14933: Mining the Mountains, a series by Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette (1998), examined the growth of mountaintop removal of coal in West Virginia, including its impacts on the environment and effects on nearby communities. Major findings included: Thousands of acres of mountaintop removal mines have been permitted in violation of the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, coal companies have not made good on promises of developing land flattened by mountaintop removal mines, and environmental damage has been widespread.
Story #21352: While more than 9,500 coal mines across the country are abandoned and in need of serious cleaning, billions of dollars designated for this task are being used for other projects. This report looks into the successes and failures of the federal Abandoned Mine Land program. (2004)
Story #17834: America's coal industry is plagued by growing numbers of death and injuries linked to company negligence and safety infractions. An examination of the worst U.S. mining disaster in 17 years, which killed 13 Alabama miners on Sept. 23, 2001, found unsafe practices, poor emergency planning and lax enforcement by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. In the underground mines of the Appalachian coal cradle, the Chicago Tribune found rising unwarrantable failure to follow mine safety laws; coal mine operators who knowingly broke safety laws faced few consequences from a hamstrung federal enforcement system. (2002)
Story #5183: The Charleston Gazette reports the state Department of Energy collects only three percent of fines it assesses against coal mine operators, allows operators to abandon improperly reclaimed mines, does little to protect archaeological or historical sites, and gives "prospect permits" to companies operating full-scale mines. (1987) Story #18656: A computer-assisted investigation by the Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.) in 2001 revealed that state government agencies are among the most common violators of worker safety standards, but -- unlike private entities -- they never get fined.
Story #18983: A five-part Newsday investigation in 2001 found that New York has the nation's highest rate of immigrants killed in the workplace. The series also uncovered that government agencies frequently fail to investigate deaths, provide enforcement for violations and offer timely compensation for victims and their families.
Story #12472: A computer-assisted investigation by Dateline NBC in 1995 revealed a shocking pattern of lax enforcement at the agency charged with protecting worker safety. Multiple examples show that OSHA is reducing fines 99 percent of the time, collecting only 33 cents on the dollar.
Story #13070: A Morning Call series in 1996 found that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration fails to shield workers from injury and death in Pennsylvania. OSHA inspects few work sites, misses accidents that maim workers and has no way of telling which workplaces are the most hazardous.
Story #10690: WJXT-Jacksonville, Fla., revealed in 1994 that OSHA had investigated fewer than one-third of all deaths during a three year period in Florida, even though federal law requires an investigation of all deaths.
More stories can be found by searching the story database.
Recent Stories
- Ken Ward Jr. reports in the Charleston, W.Va., Sunday Gazette-Mail "the nation's miners face a mounting risk because of a rescue system that is growing ever short on personnel and is in major need of reforms." From 2000 to 2002, the number of safety teams approved by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration dropped by 10 percent. Other stories include a history of the safety violations at the Sago Mine, an analysis of data that indicates lightning strikes may have played a role in the accident, and a story questioning whether the mine had adequate state environmental permits.
- Seth Borenstein, Linda J. Johnson and Lee Mueller of Knight Ridder Newspapers used federal data to find that “since the Bush administration took office in 2001, it has been more lenient toward mining companies facing serious safety violations, issuing fewer and smaller major fines and collecting less than half of the money that violators owed.” The Mine Safety and Health Administration has a smaller budget and has won fewer convictions or guilty pleas. Also see the follow-up story that addresses the MSHA's dispute with the original story.
- Jeffrey Tomich, with contributions from Jaimi Dowdell, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch used federal data to show that “Illinois’ largest coal mine was fined almost as much for safety violations last year as the rest of the state’s mines combined.” The Galatia mine, owned by the American Coal Co., was fined more than $500,000 by the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
- Katy Human and Jeff Roberts of The Denver Post examined mine safety records for Colorado and found that its "eight underground coal mines paid fines totaling almost $500,000 for hundreds of safety violations in the past two years." One mine was cited 350 times last year for a total of nearly $50,000. In comparision, the Sago Mine in West Virginia, a more productive mine, was cited 208 times and fined about $24,000 during the same time. The report does say that Colorado's mines are "safer than the national average for several years when measured in terms of injuries, according to federal figures."
IRE Publications
The Investigative Reporter's Handbook, Brant Houston's Computer-Assisted Reporting book and other helpful publications are available from IRE and NICAR.
Chapter 12 of The Investigative Reporter's Handbook is about investigating businesses, including a section specifically about safety and health in the workplace. Page 148 of the handbook refers to administrative law judges hearing cases before they reach the judicial branch. It describes a case, reported by Legal Times, in which the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Review Commission penalized operators of 800 mines.
Computer-Assisted Reporting offers guidance in using databases to report on a wide range of stories.
In the March/April 2002 issue of Uplink, Ron Nixon writes about the perils and pitfalls of OSHA data, and some ways to overcome them. Also in that issue, Stephanie Armour shares workplace data resources, including three specific story ideas concerning the workplace. She also lists seven databases you can build on your own or exisisting databases you can mine for stories.
IRE members can search the indexes of The IRE Journal and Uplink. Back issues of The IRE Journal and Uplink may be purchased for $10 each. There is an additional $10 user fee for nonmembers. Check with the Resource Center at 573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org for availability.
Web Links
- Quecreek Mine: CNN coverage of the 2002 rescue of trapped miners in Pennsylvania.
- Federal Mine Safety & Health Act of 1977
- Federal Mine Safety & Health Administration
- Underground Mine Mapping: Materials used in a 2003 MSHA workshop as part of the agency's effort to digitize abandoned mine maps
- Mine Rescue Home Page
- MSHA's Data Retrieval System permits interested parties to retrieve mine overviews, accident histories, violation histories, inspection histories, inspector dust samplings, and operator dust samplings and employment/production data. The Mine ID # for the Alma No. 1 Mine is 4608801. The Mine ID # for the Sago Mine is 4608791.
- Downloadable accident/injury data: "These 'self-extracting' files are the actual information (raw data) from the accident and injury MSHA Form 7000-2 filed with MSHA by mining operators and contractors as required under" federal regulations."
- Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, "an independent adjudicative agency that provides administrative trial and appellate review of legal disputes arising under the Federal Mine Safety and Health Amendments Act of 1977."
- West Virginia Office of Miners' Health, Safety & Training
- Summary of W.V.Fatal Mining Accidents (1997-2005), from the W.V. Office of Miners' Health, Safety & Training
- Interactive Coal Bed Mapping
- MHSA page on the Sago Mine Explosion
| For more information, contact: | |
| Jeremy Milarsky Database Library Director IRE and NICAR E-mail: jeremy@ire.org Voice: 573-882-1982 Fax: 573-884-5544 |
Beth Kopine Research Director IRE Resource Center E-mail: beth@ire.org Voice: 573-882-6668 Fax: 573-884-8151 |
