1 Copyright © 2007 by SME 

D. Caruso, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Pittsburgh, PA 

L. Steiner, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Pittsburgh, PA 

Abstract 

The health and financial costs of cumulative injuries are plaguing 

the mining industry. Industry leaders are concentrating on reducing the 

risk of injury to their workers through design and redesign of work 

environments. While ergonomics is not a currently regulated field, 

many mines are realizing that the only way to tackle their most costly 

injuries, cumulative injuries, is to make the proactive choice to 

understand those injuries, their root causes and to make workplace 

changes to prevent them from occurring. Reduction of these injuries 

not only improves the health and morale of the workers but increases 

productivity and profit for the companies. Knowledge and reporting of 

ergonomic risk factors by employees and ergonomics committees is 

key to these changes and to the reduction of cumulative injuries. 

NIOSH is developing strong relationships with industry associations 

and equipment manufacturers to leverage their communication abilities 

to transfer knowledge to their customers and make a difference in the 

health and safety of U.S. miners. The benefits of a formalized 

approach to reducing these injuries along with examples will be 

presented. 

Introduction 

While ergonomic practices are neither regulated nor enforced in 

the mining industry, many health and safety professionals have 

recognized that there are benefits to forward thinking and planning in 

this area. The foremost of reasons to engage in a program to reduce 

possible strains, cumulative stress and injuries is cost. Current 

workman’s compensation costs for a cumulative trauma related 

incident are high while many of the costs to implement solutions are 

quite low. Given this proposition, logically it makes sense to examine 

these cost/benefit issues more carefully. Previous NIOSH 

presentations and published materials have elaborated on ergonomic 

solutions and their powerful impact on the health and safety of the 

mining workforce. An approach including how those solutions can be 

communicated and implemented to reduce the likelihood that workers 

will have musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) and what some of the 

potential barriers may be to successfully bring these interventions to 

mines is discussed. 

If it ain’t broke....and other barriers 

Ergonomic issues have been referred to as “don’t fix it if it ain’t 

broke” but how do you know it is not broken? Because workplace 

injuries are so often thought of as the result of an acute incident and 

much less often considered the result of a prolonged exposure to a 

hazard, the dangers of ignoring ergonomic issues is misunderstood. At 

the core of NIOSH’s approach to this problem is the target approach 

which directs efforts where they can have the greatest impact: risk 

factors. If you think of it in a similar context as heart disease, where 

risk factors have been identified (i.e. over consuming fatty foods, lack 

of exercise, genetic predisposition) then the actions that are necessary 

become clear. You are looking for potential causes of the eventual 

injury even before the signs and symptoms occur (it “ain’t broke” but 

you can still fix it). 

Companies do not fail to exceed compliance because they do not 

care about employees, but occupational safety and health (OSH) 

professionals have many tasks to complete and “wear many hats.” 

When federal mandates and MSHA standards are complied with, they 

feel like that problem is at least minimally solved and they can move on 

to the myriad of tasks that require attention. So who has time to add 

ergonomic issues to their schedule when we have already established 

that OSH professionals are busy just meeting the regulatory 

requirements? Well there are early adopter companies who have seen 

the rising costs associated with workers’ compensation and lost time 

which result from MSD injuries. Such an economic incentive drives 

these companies to seek out ways to decrease the potential impact of 

said injuries by removing hazards and improving problem jobs on their 

respective worksites. Improving the ergonomics of jobs that result in 

higher risk for MSD injury is one possible way to reduce future costs. 

After deciding to improve occupational ergonomics within the 

mine, management can choose to involve the entire workforce in the 

process. By providing training and encouraging participation among all 

workers, no one person has to observe all tasks all the time. However, 

the problem of training the entire staff and convincing them that they 

need to participate in order to achieve a meaningful improvement in 

the health and safety of everyone is a challenge. Once trained in the 

ergonomic process, workers will know what some of the major risk 

factors are and how to describe them. Since there are so many distinct 

tasks which workers perform throughout the day, many times the 

simplest interventions can have a dramatic impact (e.g. moving heavy 

cable with an assist device rather than dragging it across the ground). 

A worker may also find it easier to observe others doing something 

overly strenuous than to realize that the same task is too much to 

handle when doing it himself. One example of this participatory 

approach is the use of employee ergonomic concern forms and risk 

factor report cards1

 which allow workers to bring attention to workplace 

conditions that may cause MSDs. Considering how mineworkers are 

always looking out for their buddies on the job, it should follow that 

reporting problem job tasks with MSD risk factors could be presented 

in the same way as machine guarding or any other occupational 

hazard. Once the concern is raised, action must be taken by 

management to evaluate the validity of the concern and implement a 

solution. Then management and employees together use a 

participatory approach to resolving the concern. Not only does this 

allow for a more realistic solution but also promotes ownership of the 

task and the solution making it more acceptable to the employees. 

The myth that says that employers have no control over what their 

workers do outside of the job relates easily to the problem of MSDs. 

Since there is really no way to tell what amount of cumulative strain the 

worker places on his or her body on or off the job, the employer is left 

little option but to consider all of it to be of his concern. To that end, 

training the worker to recognize what constitutes a strain and what 

makes a task an MSD risk factor becomes very important to the 

company. Not only do the OSH professionals need to know the latest 

information in the advancement of MSD prevention research, but 

workers need to be vigilant of the ever present hazards posed by the 

improper design of their daily work. Bridger Coal’s implementation of 

an ergonomic process shows that by making it a company-wide effort 

involving every employee boosted participation and helped them 

improve safety and health overall. During the first 3 years using the 

ergonomic process, Bridger’s ergonomics committee has implemented 

over 20 job improvements2

. Other companies including Badger Mining, 

Vulcan Materials and Unimin Corporation have successfully followed 

suit.
2 Copyright © 2007 by SME 

strategies and the stages as a company moves from pathological to 

generative (Fig. 1). 

Figure 1. Hudson's Risk Management Strategy for Health Safety and 

Environment (HSE) (Hudson 2003) 

In summary, the pathological stage can be thought 

of as the stage in which safety problems arise from the workers, and 

that the main driving force is the business and to not get caught by 

regulators. The reactive stage is the point where companies consider 

safety seriously; however only intervene following the occurrence of 

accidents. At the calculative stage, safety is driven by management 

systems, however is still imposed by management and not sought for 

by the workforce. In the proactive stage the workforce is becoming 

increasingly active in risk management, reducing the purely top-down 

approach. Finally, in a generative stage, everyone is involved in risk 

management and trying to maintain the well being of themselves as 

well as their coworkers. 

This risk management hierarchy can be thought of as an 

ergonomics risk management process where the company and the 

workforce integrate ergonomics principles into their risk assessment 

process. In this case the approach follows the same path but with a 

focus on eliminating cumulative trauma injuries. 

During the pathological stage, workers and companies are 

unaware of how musculoskeletal injuries occur and let workers look out 

for themselves. Employees may have the signs and symptoms of an 

impending injury but no changes are made to the workplace. Since 

employees are not educated, they may not know how to help 

themselves. No formal job safety analysis techniques are used and 

productivity is the primary focus. 

During the reactive stage, analysis of the incident is after the 

report of an injury or several injuries and frequently the solution or 

correction to prevent the problem is individualistic. Others doing similar 

jobs may or may not be considered as it is thought to be that 

employee’s problem. For MSD related issues, often the workers 

believe that aches and pains are just part of their jobs or the aging 

process. Workers often do not know that these recurring aches and 

pains are precursors to cumulative injuries and that these injuries can 

be prevented through planning of jobs, work environment and 

equipment purchasing. 

Characteristics of a calculative stage are described by a company 

accusing workers of being “hurt at home” or by “their hobbies” rather 

than work environment or poor work task design or planning. Some 

management may use some outside training for proper lifting 

techniques or purchase “ergonomically designed” PPE such as back 

belts to resolve issues. In some cases, the company may fix very 

specific problems successfully through training and procedural 

approaches. These interventions have positive impact on the situation 

but the more global philosophy of prevention is not brought about. 

Also, there is no formal follow up to see if the problem was resolved or 

employee level. Management believes that the system they have in 

place works well to address issues brought to their attention. 

At the proactive stage, employees are educated about 

ergonomics principles, cumulative injury progression, and techniques 

to identify and reduce risk factors associated with MSDs. Management 

relies on employees to bring issues to them and to resolve them 

together. Management may also seek to provide periodic observations 

of all tasks or establish a wellness or fit for duty program. Ergonomic 

principles are used when evaluating and redesigning jobs. 

Management and workers are not waiting for injuries to occur but 

rather they are looking for indicators (risk factors) that point to a 

potential injury and then reduce or eliminate that indicator. In some 

cases, a professional ergonomist may be hired or an ergonomics 

committee formed. Risk factors and injury reporting investigates for 

why (root causes) instead of what or when. The company takes 

responsibility for employees’ health during and outside of work and 

lays less blame on the employee. Job safety analysis techniques 

include the evaluation of risk factors at each step in the standard 

operating procedures to ensure that they are considered. Then a 

procedure is in place to follow up to ensure that the solutions worked 

and to investigate other issues. Workers appreciate these analyses 

and believe it is in their own interest and not just the company’s 

interest. Most solutions are off the shelf and lessons learned are 

communicated throughout the mine and even company wide. Still, the 

value (cost/benefit) of these interventions may be underreported. 

In the generative stage, there is anticipation of issues with regard 

to old and new processes and equipment. The ergonomic principles 

are integrated into the designing and planning processes and this 

occurs in the beginning along with and equally important as other 

engineering and purchasing decisions. Employees are trusted to make 

decisions about their jobs and recognize situations where changes 

need to be made. At this point, the employees are empowered with 

resources to make changes and inform management of needs. 

Investigation of risk factors, signs, and symptoms of MSDs is driven by 

an understanding of their root causes. The solutions are cost effective 

and creative and follow ups are done automatically. A database of all 

reported issues and changes to workplace and equipment is available 

to all the company and serves as an informational base from which to 

make the best purchasing and planning decisions. Safety is once again 

in the hands of the employees, however, a better educated and 

respected employee. The cost of MSDs or cumulative injuries is 

reduced and profits are increased, the workforce retires healthy, 

operating procedures include ergonomic principles, better habits are 

passed on to new recruits, and management and employees together 

see the overall interaction of systems and people. Less time is being 

spent on addressing health and safety issues because they are under 

control and are of interest to all. 

There are many characteristics of these stages not addressed 

here but this is a summary of what a company might expect as it 

moves towards a more generative risk management approach. A 

company can use these to measure where they are and how to get to 

where they want to be6

. The first step to achieving generative status is 

to understand what information is needed and how to educate 

employees to help themselves and their coworkers. 

Using Health and Safety Information: Communications Mapping 

In order to use health and safety information effectively, it is 

essential that we define the following communication pathways: 1) how 

health and safety information is obtained, 2) who processes it and 3) 

what they do to disseminate it to the appropriate audience within the 

mine (and if you are part of a multi-site operation, your company). 

Most current information travels the information superhighway 

and mining health and safety information is no different. There are 

many sources online for obtaining useful materials for most topics. 

However there are also offline sources like contractors, seminars, 

workshops and conferences where this information can be transferred 
3 Copyright © 2007 by SME 

(annual refresher training vs. incident tailgate talk, supervisors vs. 

rank-and-file). This may require some careful thought and planning if 

the information is highly technical, or perhaps, if the materials are in a 

suitable format, just some photocopying or putting a DVD in the player. 

Since most OSH professionals perform many functions within an 

organization, it is understandable that they seek the most ready-to-use 

information available (i.e. MASHA training courses7

). If there are funds 

available, training might be purchased from a contractor who will 

provide the requisite training to meet applicable standards; however, 

there is still some dialogue between the local OSH professionals and 

the trainer to ensure appropriate content (e.g. local problems can be 

used as examples and miners can apply what is discussed to their 

daily work). 

The decision of how to disseminate the new content to the worker 

may be informed by urgency of a particular situation which may require 

immediate attention or the mandate of the Mine Safety and Health 

Administration (MSHA) that all mines include specific topics in annual 

refresher training. 

During focus group sessions held with members of the Industrial 

Minerals Association – North America (IMA-NA) NIOSH discussed 

using trade associations as a possible conduit for transmission of new 

information and training materials as they emerge from the mining 

research laboratories. In these scenarios (Fig. 2), getting information to 

the mine level is the most detail we see; however, the same principle 

could be applied within the mine where the director of health and 

safety (DHS) would receive the information (either through active 

searching or passive notification) and then have to decide what was 

relevant to his operation.

Figure 2. Proposed model of communications where information 

travels from NIOSH or another credible source through the industry 

 If relevant, by what means should it be 

disseminated and by what media (tailgate talk, formal instructor-led 

training, video, demonstration). If the delivery of the information went 

well, those receiving the training could provide feedback to the DHS, 

who in turn could let others within his company know lessons learned 

and make recommendations to colleagues both internal and external 

through appropriate channels. Understanding how their research is 

being applied in practice will help guide NIOSH in strategically planning 

future research endeavors to better serve the mining workforce. 

While a large commitment and responsibility has been placed on 

the employees and the company to resolve ergonomic issues and 

integrate an ergonomics way of thinking, it is not solely their 

responsibility. Many issues result from poor machine and tool design 

as well as supply handling issues. For this reason, NIOSH is currently 

working with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and with 

suppliers to both educate them on ergonomics principles and training 

for their workforce, as well as developing the science to standardize 

and recommend better design. For example, supplies are often 

delivered to mines in a format that is beneficial to the manufacturers of 

the materials rather than to specifications that would reduce manual 

materials handling issues such as inadequate handles or excessive 

weight. Equipment manufacturers design ingress/egress systems that 

may or may not be based on scientific data. The idea is not to point out 

that manufacturers are purposely providing poor design features, but 

rather in some cases they are not educated to know what potential 

problems a design decision can have. They may not have educated 

their distributors (the interface between the mine company and the 

OEM) as to the benefits of available options or alternatives so that 

good communication can take place between the mine representatives 

and the manufacturers (Fig 3). 

Figure 3. Visual depiction of typical relationships relative to equipment 

purchasing. The supplier/distributor salesperson is represented as a 

potential barrier because he may not communicate the needs of the 

customer to the appropriate departments within his company. 

In some cases, OEMs have ergonomists or consult with 

ergonomists but the information link to their distributor is not strong. As 

more mines become educated on how to reduce MSDs, they will put 

more pressure on the OEMs to provide those better designs. If the 

OEMs are more generative, they can provide designs that eliminate or 

reduce MSDs now, which will give them a market advantage. For many 

issues, the principles are already available. If the purchasing decision 

making process is supported by the educated OEM, better and more 

appropriate equipment will result and not just be “labeled” 

ergonomically designed. As they better understand that it is the way 

the worker interacts with the equipment or tool that determines its 

ergonomic value and that there is no “one size fits all” answer, the 

designs will be more adaptable to worker capabilities and limitations. 

Adjustability and accessibility are the keys to good ergonomics. 

Consequence to Inaction 

Supervisors of workers who engage in as much manual labor as 

mineworkers do should think about their MSD problems and consider 

that there are consequences from doing nothing. If you are not a 

vigilant watchdog for the risk factors associated with back injuries for 

example, the potential pain and suffering to the worker and the lost 

time and cost to your company can be enormous. But if you are 

thinking how to make each task more conducive to proper posture, 

reach and load consideration, then you will catch problems before they 

result in an injury and work to “build better jobs.” 
4 Copyright © 2007 by SME 

safety, health and productivity? Yes. The generative approach will 

allow ergonomics to be integrated with other health and safety goals. 

Better communications will allow operations across commodities to 

share information and methods that work via their respective industry 

associations and NIOSH. 

References 

1. Torma-Krajewski, J., Steiner, L. Lewis, P., Gust, P. Johnson, K. 

(2006), Ergonomics and Mining: Charting a Path to a Safer 

Workplace. NIOSH IC#9491, p. 12. 

2. Torma-Krajewski, J., Steiner, L. Lewis, P., Gust, P. Johnson, K. 

(2006), Ergonomics and Mining: Charting a Path to a Safer 

Workplace. NIOSH IC#9491, p. 19. 

3. Westrum R. (1991), “Cultures with requisite imagination.” In: Wise 

J, Stager P, Hopkin J, ed. Verification and validation in complex 

man-machine systems. New York: Springer. 

4. Westrum R, Adamski AJ. (1999), “Organizational Factors 

Associated with Safety and Mission Success in Aviation 

Environments.” In: Garland DJ, Wise JA, Hopkin VD, ed. 

Handbook of Aviation Human Factors. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence 

Erlbaum. 

5. Hudson, P. (2003), “Applying the lessons of high risk industries to 

health care”, Quality and Safety in Health Care, pp. 7-12. 

6. http://www.energyinst.org.uk/heartsandminds/index.cfm

7. http://www.masha.on.ca/courses.aspx