Letters to the Editor Mine fatalities study

Your editorial — Mine fatalities study must be nation-wide — is indeed timely. The mining industry does require a greater effort to look into the causes of mine fatalities.

However, your assertion that “deaths in the mines are a random phenomenon” is questionable. If we grant the fact that they are indeed random occurrences, we must also assume that the events leading up to the fatal accidents are non-random. If we make this particular assumption, we might find ourselves on the right track.

In a report which my firm produced for the Ontario Mining Association — The Relationship between Small Crew Incentives and Accident Rates in Ontario Mines (1983) — we drew attention to the abnormally high accident rate of some miners — three times the norm.

What is needed, I believe, is a pilot study to examine factors that are rarely considered — factors such as “functional” skills, perceptual speed versus task speed, and health, for example.

If a miner is able to work safely under normal conditions, that is, when the task speed is low, what happens when the task speed increases and he has to react quickly? Some tasks are just too fast or too stressful for a man to cope with. What happens if he is not well rested or in good health?

We might also examine hyperactivity or hypoactivity, a condition that can be drug-induced or fatigue-induced.

The mining industry has shown that it is serious about reducing accidents, but we need to use the techniques and research methods of the medical researcher and the applied psychologist. It is amazing what can be found when functional behaviour is examined.

Finally, I should say that I believe it possible to develop programs to “tighten up” people’s functional skills and reduce the occurrence of “accident” behaviour in our industry. Peter Moon, P.Eng., Ph.D. Toronto.