8 MAY 2024IN MYOPINIONGLOBAL MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT: WHAT NEXT?By Tom Hethmon, Senior Manager, Risk & Safety Assurance, Anglo AmericanThe U.S. remains one of the only major mining countries whose regulations are not based on risk management principlesThe global mining industry continues to demonstrate improvement in safety and health management. This includes both actual performance, notwithstanding challenges with performance metric criteria and application, and recognizing the number of variables that contribute to the morbidity and mortality that has plagued the industry for millennia. It is not an exaggeration to acknowledge that sustainable safety and health management in mining is as complex as mining itself.While there is no reliable global database of mine safety and health performance statistics in which to monitor the industry over time, one useful indication of the performance trend is reflected in mining organizations such as the International Council on Mining and Metallurgy (ICMM), an influential trade association whose members include 25 of the largest mining companies and 40 mining-related trade and professional associations in the world. ICMM reports annual performance statistics for its member companies and reached a milestone relative to trailing performance metrics in 2022 with an average Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR) of 2.66 per million work hours based on an exposure of 2,683,513,114 work hours. This reflects 33 fatalities, the lowest count since ICMM began tracking these data in 2012, and accounts for both company workers and contractors.This has occurred due to improved governmental legislation and regulations and enforcement, more academic research identifying new opportunities for improvement, greater consistency among major mining companies in terms of risk management-centered systems of control, and the formal and informal adoption by smaller mining organizations of the same or similar risk management tools, institutionalizing effective training and competency verification, improved accountability for line management relative to safety, improved medical surveillance, among others.In the U.S., the National Mining Association (NMA) embarked on a voluntary member initiative to integrate a risk management-centered safety and health management system with structured culture enhancement linked to leadership development, into Tom Hethmon
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