Pit & Quarry, November 2009

Safety y O ver the years enormous efforts have been made by the mining industry labor and government sometimes cooperating and sometimes at odds with each other to reduce injuries and the seriousness of injuries There have been successes There have been failures In medicine prescription without diagnosis is malpractice In injury prevention prescription without diagnosis is devilish malpractice as well because it is often unrecognized In a mine or quarry there are people working The miners are there as individuals and as members of a group The methods for injury examination analysis and of corrective measures can be diagnosed one of two ways The experience of the group can tell part of the tale and the search for at risk individuals can tell a different part Target everybody Convenience dictates that miners get some of their training in a classroom setting The MSHA training standards prescribe subjects that every miner has to have Some training has to be accomplished before work starts For example first aid is natural for group training Everybody should hear and practice the same things Many loss control programs include posters on bulletin boards that are changed on a regular basis at progressive plants and at indeterminate intervals at Dark Age quarries Posters are thought to be a general good for everybody These activities are mass measures directed at the miners as a group Everybody is exposed in the hope that a message delivered generally and often will have a positive effect It can never be forgotten that an injury is particular while this everything for everybody part of the prevention program is general If everybody is exposed enough it is hoped that the general net will catch the needy miner before an incident Target miner at risk Task training on the other hand is the most particular attention a miner can get Years ago people were prepared for their crafts and professions in the apprenticeship system A journeyman took on one or a few apprentices and educated and trained them as individuals Task training is the answer to individual need The task training requirement does not imply any effort to identify the at risk miner in advance The task training requirement rests on the fact that there are specific skills a miner needs at his her job The requirement does not imply that any particular miner is the one that will have an incident If a job is done right it will be done safely Identifying the particular at risk miner that might need skill training or counseling in advance has been the subject of study and speculation for years Everyone has heard the cry If only management and labor could identify the miner at risk of an injury by diagnosing his her problem in advance we might be able to head off the injury to the miner It is important to note that the mysteriously named accident prone miner as a group or individual has never been identified in advance Neither has this miner as an individual been identified over a working lifetime The search for the accidentprone BY CARL METZGAR Safety tip miner was only an excuse to blame the miner and not the system in which he she worked On the other hand good supervisors often identify individual miners with serious disruptions in their lives that can be dangerous distractions on the job It is no surprise that work crews generally are willing to make compensatory adjustments for a coworkers temporary difficulty However this distracted miner by no stretch of the imagination is destined to have repeated injuries because of fundamental biology The general and the particular Depending on the makeup of the groups of miners and the size of the groups peculiar things can happen Groups of employees who respond to the general training can still have more injuries than the at risk group if it has been identified simply because the general group of miners is larger than the group that has difficulties in performance It is a peculiar fact of training that only a few miners profit from the mass effort for the total workforce Individual task training is more effective when it gets matched up with the appropriate miner Alternate attack Individual task training is more effective when it gets matched up with the appropriate miner Carl R Metzgar CSP has more than 30 years of safety and health experience in the aggregates industry He provides consulting services with a specialization in program evaluation training compliance and loss control and can be reached at 336 766 8264 cmetz46840@ aol com 40 PIT QUARRY November 2009 www pitandquarry com