Big Picture Look at Safety Needed after Coal Tragedy

摘要

Fewer U.S. miners died in 2009 than in any other prior year. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) heralded the achievement in a January 2010 news release with these words: Just three short months later, an explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia convulsed the nation and cast doubt on the agency's self-congratulatory claim about the central role of tough enforcement in mine safety. Responding to the worst disaster in U.S. coal mining in 40 years, Celeste Monforton, a former staffer under MSHA Assistant Secretary Davitt McAteer, expressed the sentiment of many when she said, "I really wonder if we're moving backwards rather than forwards."