Operator (Erika...: Welcome to the MSHA stakeholder conference call. At this time, all participants 

will be in a listen only mode. We will be conducting a question session after the 

presentation. I'll now turn the meeting over to your host. Assistant Secretary 

Williamson, you may begin.

Assistant Secret...: Good afternoon, and thanks everyone for joining what is our first stakeholder 

call for the year. We're getting started a little earlier this year, and already 

thinking about trying to set up times for the next ones. And I just have a few 

introductory remarks. Just to give you an idea of what we're going to walk 

through, I have some introductory remarks, and then we're going to do a review 

of fatalities, which we always do, and then continue with What we did in the 

last stakeholder meeting we had, was having a health update. And I should step 

back a second and just say that our review of fatals is going to be from Marcus 

Smith who does the review, and then we're going to have a health update from 

the Chief of Health, Greg Meagle. And then as always have time for questions 

and then some closing remarks.

I'll just go ahead and get started. The thing that I want to start out with, and it's 

something that we're very excited about and something that the agency has put 

a lot of hard work into for the past few months. And for those of you that don't 

know, we recently sent our proposed silica rule to the Office of Management 

and Budget to start the interagency review process. I don't know, I think we 

might have gotten questions on it, and I'm sure people will have questions, and 

as I said in the previous ones, when it's come up, still at this point, we cannot 

talk about what the content of it is or let you know. I mean that will be hopefully 

soon enough. But as it goes through this process, I thought it was just helpful to 

underscore the significance of this first step that the agency took.

And going as far back as the spring regulatory agenda in 1998, that was when a 

silica proposed rule first appeared on the agency's reg agenda. And at that point 

in time it was estimated that we'd have a proposed rule in by the end of 

December in '98, and fast forward. And the broader point is that every 

administration, no matter party or what have you, has had silica on the reg 

agenda in some form or another, whether it's an NPRM or some other form, 

over and over and over again, it's come on and off. And as we've been saying, 

and as I've communicated, at least going back as far as I started back in April, 

getting this proposed rule out has been a top priority for the agency, and 

working on it and getting it to a final rule will remain a top priority for this 

agency, but don't want to get that far ahead yet.

So really just wanted to share that we've sent it to OMB, it's in that inter-agency 

review process. I said I can't share the content of it at this point, but the last 

regulatory agenda that was published, our best estimate was issuing a proposed 

rule in April 2023. And like I said, it's out of our hands at this point as it goes 

through the review process. But what I can say is that I know that this rule is of 

interest to probably everyone on the call, to be honest. And we look forward to 

once we get the proposed rule out, to receiving and reviewing the substantive 

and thoughtful comments that we know that we'll get from this group and 
others. So that's the first point I wanted to start with, is that we've sent our 

proposed silica rule to the office of management and budget.

The second thing I want to highlight and note is the agency has placed a mine on 

a pattern of violations for the first time in eight years. It did so at the end of 

2022. And I guess the few things I want to say about that is one, if you're even in 

the discussion about getting put on a POV, that's not a good place to be in. That 

means your compliance history and certain metrics are above and beyond what 

would be your peer in mines. And so the other point that's related is there's no 

reason for any mine to ever be put on a POV, just to be honest, because we 

have a POV calculator on our website, and we have an SNS calculator on the 

website. So at any point in time, any mine operator can go on our website and 

mine operators know what their compliance history is.

I mean they know what citations and orders they're receiving out of the 

inspections, but even beyond that, we make it easy for them. You can go on our 

website at any point in time, use either one of these calculators, and find that 

out. The other thing that happens is that when the districts, or when we know 

that a mine may be approaching a POV, districts reach out and have discussions 

with the mine operator. And a big part of that discussion is the thing that I want 

to... the point that I want to emphasize and underline, as it relates to POV, 

which is it's very important that if a mine is even approaching, or just doesn't 

want to even get to a point of potentially approaching meeting the criteria that 

would satisfy a pattern of violations, it's imperative that mine operators work 

with the districts to develop a corrective action program.

Because one of the mitigating circumstances that can be considered if a mine 

comes up in the screening is not only the establishment of, what I'll call a CAP, 

it's a corrective action program, but you have to establish, you have to have a 

CAP in place, but also have demonstrated progress in terms of hitting the 

benchmarks and the different things under the CAP. So that's where getting a 

CAP in place is incredibly important, and the districts are there to work with 

mine operators to work through those and work through those plans. We have 

guidance and guidelines on our website. That is information that could be 

provided to any mine operator that is interested in developing a CAP and 

implementing one.

The last thing I'll just underscore on this point is that I said this too, and publicly, 

and if a mine does come up on the screening and we go through the process, I 

mean this is one of MSHA's tools in its toolbox. Congress put this provision in 

the mine act for a reason, and it's to address really problematic mines. And if a 

mine comes up in the screening, we'll use that authority that Congress gave us, 

as I think Congress intended for us to, to address that situation. But as I said, no 

mine should ever be on it, get put on a POV, with the calculators, and talking to 

the districts, and implementation of corrective action programs. But I wanted 

people to know that at the end of the year we did, MSHA did place a mine on a 

POV for the first time in eight years.
Third point I wanted to just mention real quick is I wanted to... And I don't want 

to spend a lot of time talking about this because Marcus is going to have a really 

good presentation for you and go into this more in depth, but I at least wanted 

to note that last year, there was a noticeable improvement in terms of the 

number of fatalities from the previous year. And that is something that is 

obviously good news, but there's also still a lot more work to do there. And we 

know that, and we know that we have to work with all of you all, but I just 

wanted to take a second to note that fact, and note that that reduction in 

fatalities came from a lot of hard work from a lot of people, industry, labor, 

grantees, others that are just involved in the industry, and of course our own 

MSHA employees and all the work that we do at MSHA. So it's a collective effort 

to address some of these things.

So without getting too in the weeds or saving some for Marcus, one of the 

things that did go down, and it was an area that we've talked about on these 

calls and focused on, was powered haulage. The powered haulage accident 

went down, but we also noticed machinery went up a bit. So as we think 

about... and Marcus will touch on some of these things a little bit more... as we 

think about moving into this year, and where we can all focus our efforts and try 

to reduce that number even more, and prevent not only fatal accidents, but just 

accidents in general. We still got a lot of work to do and we're going to be trying 

to think and identify and share best practices and areas that we're seeing. I 

mean we're still having to issue all this highlight one that we talked about at the 

last stakeholder meeting. We're still seeing and having to issue a lot of imminent 

danger orders for not wearing fall protection. And that's one of the things that if 

you have it, and you're appropriately wearing it can save your life, and it's those 

kind of things.

Real quick, and Greg will talk more about some of the health initiatives, but just 

wanted to let people know we're still focused on our silica enforcement 

initiative. That's still a big priority, especially as we're continuing to go through 

the rule making process, but we're also just more broadly focused on health, 

and that's consistent with the Miner Health Matters campaign that we rolled 

out last year. And we're going to continue not just looking at silica, but miner 

health more broadly, and being on the lookout for that. And it's enforcement, 

it's training, it's education, it's having discussions with groups like this. It's when 

I go out and speak, talking about the importance of maintaining awareness 

about one's health. All these different things fall under this big umbrella that is 

our Miner Health Matters campaign. I just wanted to continue to say health will 

continue to be a focus in 2023 for MSHA.

And lastly, wanted to just share very recently, and we put out a press release on 

it, but we've talked about the development of the miner safety and health app, 

and it's now available in Spanish. So that took some hard work from MSHA and 

other folks at the Department of Labor, but we're happy to report now that it's 

now available in Spanish, and it's available both on Apple and Android. So that's 

all the introductory remarks that I have, and... Oh, the other thing real quick 

too, I almost forgot this. MSHA now has a Facebook page. So I would encourage 
you all to follow us on Facebook, in addition to Twitter, and other places, our 

website, and we'll be posting a lot of good information that's on there. And so 

please share that, and let people know that follow us on Facebook for good 

information. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to Marcus for a discussion 

about fatalities.

Marcus Smith: Thank you, Chris. As Chris said, my name is Marcus Smith and I'm the chief of 

accident investigations in the MSHA enforcement office. Today I'll be discussing 

fatalities that occurred after our last stakeholder meeting. Our last stakeholder 

meeting occurred on October the 20th of last year. There have been seven 

fatalities in this time period. The first fatality occurred on October the 22nd, and 

the seventh fatality occurred two days ago on January the 23rd. During this 

presentation I'm going to discuss stats, after that I will discuss three of the seven 

fatalities. And then as Chris mentioned during his introduction, I'm going to end 

my presentation with a focus on machinery accidents, as we have seen an 

upward trend as we look back over the previous years. So if you're following 

along in the presentation, I'm going now to slide two. This first slide, as the title 

says, deals with accident classifications, power college, we have two, and 

machinery we have two. And those two classifications have typically been the 

leading classifications as we look at fatal accidents. We also have one in hand 

tools, engulfment, and drowning.

Moving now to slide three, the number of mine employees, six of those 

fatalities occurred at mines that had 50 or more employees. One totality 

occurred at a mine that had 19 or less mine employees. On slide four, 

experience at the mine. And as we always talk about during the stakeholder 

calls, we really focus on experience at the mine, and experience at the activity, 

and especially focusing on those miners that have less experience. As you can 

see, we have three fatalities that occurred to miners that had greater than one 

year, but less than up to two years of experience at the mine. Three over 10 

years, and greater than two up to four years, one fatality.

On slide five as I mentioned, experience at the activity. One year or less, one 

fatality up to two years, add two. So we have three that were two years or 

below. Greater than 10 years, three, and greater than two to four years, one 

fatality. And on slide six, mine employees and contractors. Six fatalities were

employees of the mine operator, and one fatality involved a contractor. Moving 

now to slide seven. Now I'm going to discuss as I mentioned, three of the seven 

fatalities. I going to talk about one powered haulers fatality and two machinery 

fatalities. This first fatality we see on slide seven is the third fatality in this time 

period, and it occurred on December the sixth at the Castile Mine.

A miner died when the diesel tractor he was operating struck a pillar. The miner 

was thrown from the tractor, and was crushed under the rear tire of the tractor. 

There was actually two pillars involved in this fatality. There was a pillar that the 

vehicle struck. When the vehicle struck that first pillar, the miner who was 

driving the vehicle was either thrown or removed from the diesel tractor, and as 
the tractor continued moving forward to strike the second pillar, he was pinned 

under a rear tire of the tractor.

The victim was not wearing a seatbelt, the seatbelt worked and was not latched 

at the time of the accident. We look at best practices to prevent this type of 

fatality, wear seat belts when operating mobile equipment, maintain control of 

equipment while it is in operation, and train miners in the safe performance of 

their assigned task. That's on slide eight. So moving now to slide nine, this is the 

fourth fatality in this time period, and it occurred on December the 16th in 

Texas and this is a machinery fatality classification. In this fatality, this contract 

mechanic was preparing this excavator for transportation and part of the 

process preparing for transportation is to remove the counterweight. This 

counterweight weighs several tons, and as he was working to remove the 

counterweight, the counterweight fell, and struck him. And in this fatality, the 

victim had one year and 13 weeks of experience, total mine experience, which 

includes experience at the mine and experience at the activity.

Moving now to slide 10, best practices to prevent this type of fatality is 

positioning in a manner to stay clear of hoisted loads or any overhead load, any 

load that can fall on a miner. Correct positioning is very important. Avoiding 

pinch points, that goes right along with that, when working on or near 

equipment or machinery. It's also important to follow safe work procedures, 

consistent with the design of equipment when working on or near such 

equipment. And a lot of times when we are doing these investigations, we take 

a look at the operator's manual, and how the operator states that certain work 

should be done on that equipment. And there are times when we find that 

those procedures are not followed. So that's something else that we can focus 

on, as we look at preventing these types of accidents, is to get the manual, read 

the manual, train on the manual, follow the manual, especially when it comes to 

activities that create specific hazards.

Moving on to slide 11, this is the fifth fatality and the time period. This occurred 

on January the fourth of this year in Tennessee. This again is a machinery 

fatality. In this fatality, the miner was fatally injured when he was positioned 

between the Pitman, if you look on the left picture on that slide, you'll see a 

Pitman assembly. He was positioned between the Pitman assembly and the 

crusher housing. So if you go to the right there, you'll see crusher housing, kind 

of where that arrow is. It's pointing to the crusher housing, but right where that 

tip of that arrow is about where the victim was standing. On the right picture 

you can see a belt that goes underneath that jaw crusher.

They had removed the toggle plate, and he put it on the belt, and he was 

standing on the toggle plate, and he was positioned in between the Pitman 

assembly and the crusher housing, and they were trying to remove that, the 

toggle bearing, which is also labeled on the left picture. While the miners were 

working to do that, the Pitman assembly moved to the right in the picture and 

crushed the victim, pinning the victim against the crusher housing. And in this 
fatality the victim had one year and 50 weeks, almost two years of experience, 

total experience, which also includes mine and activity experience.

Going to slide 12 best practices, blocking components against motion. That's 

something that we've talked about several times in our stakeholder calls. 

Blocking against motion. Again, like I mentioned previously, positioning. Proper 

and safe positioning, away from pinch points. As I mentioned a few minutes 

ago, manufacturer's recommendations. Knowing them, following them, training 

on them, making sure that they are followed. And developing procedures for 

work if there's any confined space or anything of that nature. Developing 

procedures, processes, that keep everybody safe all the way through that work 

activity. So those are the three fatalities that I wanted to talk about. Moving to 

slide 13, I'm just going to focus a little bit on machinery fatalities. As Chris said, 

we've seen an upward trend. We're seeing an upward trend in machinery 

fatalities. And as it says on this slide, accidents are classified as machinery when 

they result from the action or motion of machinery, or from a failure of any 

component part of that machinery.

If we look at last year, we had 10 fatal machinery accidents. These accidents 

involved two bulldozers and two excavators, a continuous mining machine, a 

soil compactor, an auger conveyor, a crane, an electric shovel, and a drill. This 

was a 25% increase from the previous year, 2021. So moving to slide 14, we 

took a look, and we went back to 2018, and we looked at the number of fatal 

accidents we had in each of those calendar years. And as you can see, that 

graph on this slide, that represents an upward trend. So that's something that 

we need to send notice of, we need to be aware of, and work together to 

prevent these types of accidents.

Moving to slide 15 as a part of our review, we took a look at the types of 

equipment involved in the machinery fatalities, and identified the top five 

pieces of equipment. And as you can see there, plant equipment and excavators 

make up 50%, when we look at the top five. So plant equipment, those would 

be that equipment in a plant of some sort, like a crusher that we talked about, 

or a conveyor, auger conveyor, trailers or the truck trailers, cranes and 

bulldozers. Going to slide 16, part of our process when we conduct accident 

investigations, if you've had a chance to review fatal accident reports that are 

posted on MSHA.gov, you will note that towards the end of each fatal report, 

we talk about root causes. Part of our process that investigators perform as we 

look at the direct cause of the accident, then we ask why did that occur? What 

caused that to happen?

And that, from the direct cause, then when we answer those questions, that 

gives us our indirect causes. When we identify the indirect causes, we keep

asking why. We keep asking what caused this to happen. And as we answer 

those questions, eventually we get down to the root causes of the accident. So 

once again, in this time period, 2018 through last year, we identified the top 

three root causes, and number one, training. As we've stated many times on the 

stakeholder calls, we look at experience at the mine, experience at the activity, 
and when we look at those, you have a relation there to training. Making sure 

that miners are properly trained at the mine, the mine environment, the unique 

aspects of the things they will encounter at that mine. And then also the big one 

is task training, making sure miners are properly trained to perform the task 

that they're assigned to perform, that they know the safe work procedures, 

safety and health aspects of that task. Those are the things that are important.

And so as a root cause, number one, we identified that the mine operator did 

not provide adequate training and new miner training, you see that a lot. Task 

training as I just mentioned. Number two guards, the mine operator did not 

assure that guards were in place while the equipment was in operation. And 

number three, blocking equipment against hazardous motion, before 

performing repairs or maintenance. So the top three root causes, and we always 

talk about preventing these accidents and working together. So these are three 

root causes, the top three that we need to work together on and focus on. 

Training, adequate guards, guards in place, and blocking equipment against 

hazardous motion.

And onto the last slide in my presentation, slide 17, once we as an agency 

identify the root causes, then the next step is to meet with the mine operator to 

discuss corrective actions that can be put in place, that will be put in place to 

prevent this accident from occurring again. And what I want to focus on this 

slide is where we say in the bullets, implementing written procedures. Putting 

these procedures down in writing, coming up with these procedures, putting 

them down in writing, making sure that miners are trained, fully implementing 

them to institutionalize the things that are necessary to prevent these types of 

accidents.

So number one, implementing written procedures to assure the required 

training is provided and there are times when, as I said before, where the 

manufacturer's manual needed to be incorporated into the training. The 

training plan needs to be revised, that kind of thing, to incorporate that. 

Training miners to secure guards in place while equipment is in operation, and 

developing and implementing procedures, third bullet, written procedures 

again, to block equipment against hazardous motion. The way repairs or 

maintenance are performed is key, and identifying the moment and the time 

when that equipment must be blocked against hazardous motion is key, when 

maintenance and repairs are conducted and performed. So that ends my 

presentation. I guess I will turn it over to Greg.

Gregory Meikle: My name's Gregory Meikle, I'm with MSHA and I'm Chief Division of Health in 

Enforcement. And I wish today to continue our quarterly stakeholder meeting, 

and focus and continue to focus upon our initiative for miners' exposure to 

respirable quartz silicon dioxide. As we went over the last quarterly meeting, we 

had plotted, and we have a pie chart here, that represents the percentages of 

each one of the occupations in fiscal year 2021 that were overexposed to silica 

during that fiscal year. And we see, and as I said last quarterly stakeholder 

meeting, those miners that are performing occupational work, that is at a high 
risk of over exposure, when you look at the breakdown of the over exposures 

year by year, those occupations that are at the highest risk are those that are 

most overexposed.

So in fiscal year 2021, we had four coal mines, the continuous mining machine 

operator and high wall drill, bulldozer, shuttle car, roof boulders, long wall 

occupations, those were the occupational over exposures for that fiscal year. 

Last quarter, we went over the first three quarters of fiscal year 2022, and we've 

completed that. And again the continuous mining machine operator, the haul 

wall drill operator, roof boulder operator, bulldozer operator, shuttle car 

operator, long wall operators, they are again in those occupations that are most 

overexposed or most often overexposed to silica at our nation's coal mines. And 

when we went over this last quarter, we were focused upon, okay, these are 

things that are published and have been connected back to the abatements of 

those samples that we just done an occupational breakdown on.

And we find that most often the abatements of each one of these citations are 

through the implementational correction of already existing controls, that are 

published as best practices in the mining industry for coal, and for metal and 

nonmetal. So these best practices, we have a link here at the bottom that would 

take you to NASHA's site, and we've listed a couple of these, four of those 

occupations that are most often overexposed to quartz. And metal and 

nonmetal in fiscal year or calendar year 2021, is what this is listed as. We have 

the laborer cleanup, crusher operator, utility, stone cutter, dry screening, 

bagger. We have these, and if you go back, you can go back... These are the 

most often overexposed because they're at the highest risk of overexposure, 

and our sampling program has born that out. In calendar year 2022, there was 

some repositioning of the order, but the numbers didn't deviate far. Stone 

cutters, crush operators, baggers, utility laborers, truck drivers, kiln, we see 

these occupations repeat.

And as with the best practices in coal, we also have a best practices that has 

been published for the metal and nonmetal mining industry, and we have listed 

two of the best practices most often utilized to prevent and to correct 

overexposures, and abate the conditions and practices we found when issuing 

citations. And we went over some of that last quarter, but they remain and I 

went over those to set up what we want to focus on. And I want to use it as an 

example to all of us to look at and consider. When it comes to environmental 

cabs or enclosures, since our last quarterly meeting we can go over five 

examples of overexposures on miners that were in what were being protected 

by environmental enclosures. So on the first one, the most recent one, our 

sampling was on December 20th, 2022. A high wall drill operator was 

overexposed, and the respirable dust concentration of that overexposure was 

0.5 milligram per cubic meter on respirable coal mine dust.

That dust was 25% quartz, and had a concentration of 127 micrograms per cubic 

meter of respirable quartz. In the abatement and termination of the citation, a 

revision of the surface mine respirable dust control plan now includes a boot 
cleaner, cleaning schedule for the cab, and other practices limiting the entry and 

exit, that is opening the door and windows, in specified areas and activities. So 

of course in the parking area of the equipment would be another situation. 

That's where you'd enter and exit. But while in the pit and the other mining 

equipment is active, and that respirable dust is being generated by the 

equipment, that's now limited in the respirable dust control plan for this 

particular mine and this particular occupation. On December 8th, 2022, a front 

end loader operator was overexposed, and that exposure was a 0.55 milligram 

per cubic meter respirable coal mine dust which had 23% quartz equating to a 

concentration of 128 micrograms per cubic meter respirable quartz.

And we saw that this piece of equipment that should have been protected 

because it had an environmental cab, had some problems. They had the front 

bottom glass steel was missing. It left an eight-inch gap opening to the outside 

environment for the length of that glass. And there was also unsecured access 

panels in the floorboard, which also left the cab open to outside environments. 

Now the cab was corrected in its flaws, and that led to the abatement of the 

conditions that led to the citation. On December 7th, 2022 there was an 

excavator operator that had a respirable dust sample of 0.75 milligrams per 

cubic meter and that sample had 46, almost 47% quartz. That concentration 

equates to 352 micrograms per cubic meter of quartz. The operator 

implemented a surface mine respirable dust control plan, which included similar 

provisions, a boot cleaner, cleaning schedule for the cab, other practices limiting 

the entry and exit of the machinery, or the environmental cab in specific areas 

and activities of the mine. And that was what was utilized in order to abate the 

conditions and practices for the issuance of that citation and overexposure.

On December 6th, 2022 there was a bulldozer operator overexposed at 0.762 

milligrams per cubic meter, an 18% quartz concentration, and a 141 microgram 

per cubic meter respirable course concentration. There was a respirable dust 

control plan established, maintenance and cleaning of the equipment was 

included on the scheduling for that environmental cab. On December 1st, 2022 

there was another excavator operator that was overexposed, and the respirable 

mine dust concentration was 1.09 milligrams per cubic meter, with a 14% 

quartz, and a concentration of 156 micrograms per cubic meter. It was stated in 

the body that the excavator was almost new and no defects were found. 

However, he noted that the operator was a heavy smoker, and ran the shift with 

the door open during the shift, and noted that he spoke to him about this, and 

noted visible dust that day.

In other words, the activities and areas of the mine that that excavator was 

being operated, there was visible dust there with the door and possibly the 

window open. In the abatement of the conditions and practices, there was again 

a surface mine respirable dust control plan, including a cleaning schedule for the 

cab, and limiting the practices of entry and exit and opening the door in 

specified areas and activities of the mine. In the metal and nonmetal mining 

since our last stakeholder meeting, there has been two over exposures. One on 

December 15th, 2022. It was a ball mill operator, and the exposure was a 1.82 
milligram per cubic meter respirable dust sample, containing 20% quartz, and 

that equated to a concentration of 368 micrograms per cubic meter.

And this was cristobalite, which has a more toxic effect. This citation is still 

outstanding, but additional controls and time spent in the enclosure will be key 

to the abatement. So that ball mill operator needs to stay in the enclosure more 

often, because going out in the environment where the concentration is higher 

has been identified as the root cause of the problem for the overexposure. On 

October 27th, our front end loader operator had a concentration of respirable 

dust of 1.45 milligrams per cubic meter with 28% quartz, a concentration of 417 

micrograms per cubic meter on respirable quart. In abatement of the conditions 

and practices, the mine operator installed a new door kit, a new seal kit around 

the door, sealed other holes in the environmental cab, cleaned the air 

conditioning system and filter, and a plan with a schedule for maintenance was 

implemented to abate the violation.

That's a lot to say, but there's a common theme here. The controls were in 

place, the problem was utilizing those controls and maintaining those controls, 

and these are real instances that we have to point to over the last quarter. 

These are the things we can prevent without much cost to the mine operator, 

and with just a little diligence we can make these go away, and we won't have 

to talk to them, whether before or after. And with our silicon initiative we're 

focusing on this, because this is the toxic material that is overexposure in 

miners, and is causing disease. Ms. Williamson has already informed that this 

quarterly conference, stakeholder meeting, the efforts that we have in place, 

and ongoing to go to rulemaking and develop a new standard for our miners' 

exposure to silica, respirable silica.

And we can go over now the best practices in a little bit more detail, and we 

hope to have an alert on the best practices for these environmental cabs and 

environmental enclosures soon on our website. But going over that, if there's a 

properly designed and maintained cab and environmental enclosure, it can 

greatly reduce. We see that, we just went over that. It can prevent and it can 

evade the conditions that caused measurable overexposures and high 

overexposures. So maintaining the cab's integrity minimizes outside 

contaminants from entering the cab by providing positive pressure. And for 

those of you that are familiar with mining and the equipment, you know what 

I'm talking about. When we have pressure on the inside, air goes out and not in. 

So the outside environment that have our mining activities and which generate

the respirable dust that contains quartz, it stays out. The filtration of that 

system has to be maintained also. So maintain, replace the seals, gaskets 

around the doors and windows and any other openings we see, cracks and 

structure around the cab. All of that plays its role in making sure that that cab 

remains pressurized.

So maintain the cab, maintain the systems that we have in place, put them in 

place if they're not in place. Next slide will show some other practices. And so 

we see that other key considerations can be utilized to help to reduce 
overexposures. Some of the equipment on the inside, to maintain them, that 

means to set forth a schedule for cleaning. Miners get in and out of their 

vehicles with boots, and mud, and that's the stuff that when it dries out, and the 

picture at the bottom left, that's your HVAC, that's your heater there. And when 

that is turned on in the wintertime, it's going to dry out that mud that's on your 

boots that's dragged into the equipment, and then the fan is going to help as 

there's vibration, and the movement of the boots, and the miner inside the cab, 

to liberate it into the environment that the miner is breathing.

So that has to be cleaned up, and it has to be done methodically, and on the 

schedule to maintain and to prevent overexposures. But it's not only the 

cleaning of the inside of the cab, but the system that is pressurizing the air that's 

going into that environment, or recirculating in that environment has to be 

maintained too. So you have to replace those filters. And I know I'm talking to 

people who already know that, but we're reminding everybody that we have to 

be diligent about this. These are overexposures that ought not happen. So I 

know we don't want to do that, because it ends in abatement of a citation, and 

we want to prevent that. But better yet, not just the abatement of the citation, 

it's the exposure to the miners, and this is accumulative over their mining 

career. So we've got to do this in order to get ahead of what will happen after 

the exposures come to fruition and that's the development of disease.

Another part that we want to emphasize on, in order to implement and to put in 

place the controls necessary to prevent over exposure, we have to know where 

there are overexposures. And in the metal and nonmetal mining industry, there 

has been since our last meeting, several inquiries that came to my attention, 

and I wanted them to share that with the entire group. So in metal and 

nonmetal mining we have two regulations, they say essentially the same thing. 

It's incumbent upon the mine operator to conduct surveys frequently enough to 

determine the adequacy of the controlled measures in place to protect miners. 

And the exposure monitoring is what I'm talking about, we need to do it in 

enough frequency and in the places necessary to make sure the miners are 

being protected, with the controls necessary to maintain the compliance. Now 

some ask me, okay, what's an acceptable method?

Well we don't do endorsements, but we've shown a picture of the sampling 

train that MSHA uses. Now we would encourage you to do what is best for your 

mine, but if you want to replicate ours, we would be perfectly okay with that. So 

we've got a sampling train that includes a Dorr-Oliver 10 millimeter cyclone 

assembly, and we use a constant flow dust pump, and a 37 millimeter respirable 

dust cassette, and we use a gravimetric champion method. There are some 

instruments out there that are direct read that you can utilize. We even use 

those instruments as compliance monitoring in the coal mine industry for 

respirable coal mine dust. If you want to know your quartz concentration, I 

know of no instrument direct read that can differentiate on mineral content.

So in order for you to know what the percentage of quartz and your quartz 

exposures are, the gravimetric sampling method, or this is the method that we 
use and the method you can use in order to determine, okay, where do I need 

additional controls? Where do I need controls? Where do I need to revise my 

controls, because they're not adequate? And we would encourage and 

somebody might ask, okay well how often and where and all of that. That would 

be a case by case. And if you need to discuss those things, please feel free to call 

me. My contact is on our webpage, and also you can see it here on the last slide. 

So I think at this point in our presentation we're going to go to questions for 

our...

Jeanette Galani...: Hi everyone, this is Jeanette Galanis, deputy assistant secretary. I'm going to 

hand it over to Pat Sylvie who will start the question and answer process with 

answering some of the questions that came in beforehand to us.

Pat Sylvie: Thank you, Jeanette. And what I'm going to try to do, people who know me, I 

know some people on the call, I talk fast so I'm going to try not to be redundant, 

and I'm going to try to group some of these questions. At first, I was going to call 

out the questions by last name, but I'm not going to do that. What I'm going to 

do is, I'm going to talk about the questions that dealt with... And I don't want to 

call out people by name, but I want to, the questions that dealt with an update 

of the silica rule, and in a word I'd like to say to you all, you heard Chris give that 

update at the beginning of his talk.

Some of them, some of the questions dealt with specific updates on the 

respirable silica rule, as well as updates on any regulatory activity that MSHA 

has, as well as updates on any stress limit. So I take that to be a question of 

asking for an update on the silica rule. So on that, you heard him say that that 

was at OMB, you all who follow rulemaking, and I know there are attorneys 

probably on the call, and lobbyists, and people various, and people who follow 

rulemaking, you know during that process, and I'm not telling you anything you 

don't know, you can ask for a 12866 meeting, and I'm sure some of you will do 

that. We will probably listen, some of us will probably listen to you. At a 

minimum, our Spanish director who is Arami Noe, or some of her staff. And I'm 

going to repeat, I am going to repeat one thing that Chris said. I wrote it down. 

You people who know me know I write notes.

He said We look forward to your substantive and thoughtful comments. So I 

reiterate that, that's a bit of humor y'all. Substantive and thoughtful comments 

and those who follow rulemaking know exactly what I'm talking about. The next 

comments that I'm going to put together are going to be a combination of the 

ones that dealt with an uptick, as your comment goes, in the fatal events, and 

what are some of the solutions that we have. And some there mention power 

haulage, as well as seat belts, as well as, and I'm lumping this all together so I 

can discuss it in one answer, as well as here, the proposed power haulage 

standard. And really it's the surface mobile equipment rule, just to be clear, as it 

addresses power haulage issues, you are right. But it's the surface mobile rule, 

as well as I said seat belts, didn't I, and the increase in power haulage they 

talked about. Let me see, it was one other thing I mentioned seatbelts, I'm 

trying to knock all these together.
So to talk about that, the surface mobile safety program, to be honest, I mean 

that's what it is. That rule is here in final rule. The next iteration would be a final 

rule that is at MSHA, and we hope to, I should know, to be able to tell you what 

the date is. But in the fall agenda, if I'm not mistaken, the date for that was... 

Romes telling me July, July of 2023. Now as I sit here today, that appears to me 

to be fairly ambitious, but we are going to try to make that date, because I think 

that is very important. Because as you heard Chris say, and as you heard Marcus 

say, we did see some improvement, and significant... I don't like to even talk 

about that either. But we saw significant improvement in powered haulage 

accidents and fatalities, and I think that was through the combined efforts of all.

So as a segue, another question says what are we going to do with the uptick in 

machinery accidents, like we did in powered haulage? And I would say there 

that we are going to target, just like we did in powered haulage, and Marcus 

talked a little bit about that. We are going to turn our focus to where we are 

seeing the increase, because we don't have unlimited resources, as you all 

know, and we are going to target our resources. Now we see somewhat of an 

increase in machinery, personal protective equipment, lack thereof. And I'm 

lumping things together like falls, personal protective equipment, dealing with 

electrical hazards, dealing with burns, dealing with drowning, and a whole 

laundry list of personal protective equipment. And what happens there, you 

have to have it available and you have to have miners trained to use it. It's got 

to be there and miners have to be trained on how to use it.

So that's a two-part component. So we are going to turn our focus to that, both 

educational policy and development, as well as our enforcement staff. And our 

inspectors are inspectors, but they also do compliance assistance too, to the 

operators and the miners. So it's going to be a three pronged approach as we go 

out and try to focus on these types of fatalities, and accidents, and injuries, 

much like we did with powered haulage. And not to specifically not answer the 

issue that the person raised on seat belts, I would hope they actually would be 

proposed as standard. And just so you know, on any question dealing with why 

aren't we proposing a standard, I have to punt on that because that's a policy 

decision, and that has to go on the regulatory agenda. The regulatory agenda 

goes down to the Department of Labor to be approved, and then to OMB.

So I can't give you, we can't give you, an answer on that today. We appreciate 

that you brought those issues to our attention, and we will look at that, 

particularly from the standpoint that you have attention to that. But on seat 

belts, we have been using that as a best practice for as long as I've been here 

and that's been a long time. But I would hope that the surface mobile 

equipment final rule, and that would be the next iteration, would also help 

there. Because the way the proposed rule was constructed, each operator could 

address his or her program to address power haulage issues at their mine. And I 

would think, this is me thinking, that seat belts could be part of that. So that's 

that one. And it was a couple more I missed, I was trying to write things down 

here. Oh, just after, and I know most of you probably know this now, ask what 

do we do in '22, and what can you look forward to in 23?
One thing we already did, and I'm sure you didn't look forward to that, was we 

raised the penalties to deal with inflation. But because of the debt collection 

act, we have to do that, debt collection improvement act as amended by 

something, something, something, some loan thing. We have to do that every 

year. And so we did that, and just as an example, if I'm not mistaken, the 

flagrant, which against is the highest penalty, went up in excess of 300 and 

something thousand dollars. And the regular formula, the highest amount for 

the regular formula penalty went to 80, had to be 80 something thousand. I 

don't know exactly what it was. The reason I say it had to be 80 something 

thousand, is because before that it was 79,000. So that had to be 80,000. And 

before the inflation, I should have had that in front of me, the flagrant was 

291K. So I'm thinking that went to about 306, if not above 306. I know some of 

you will probably give me the answer when we open it up for questions.

So the question that had to do with a gentleman from dolomite, the question 

had to do with the dust limit. I interpreted that to be silica. Let me see, did I 

miss any? I don't think I missed any of the ones that I intended to group 

together. And so next we had some that talked about training, and basically the 

same ones that talked about annual refresher training, and how do we that and 

the declaration deal, particularly with the declaration on COVID. And it's my 

understanding that the emergency declaration on COVID hasn't been lifted yet. 

It's still ongoing. And so I would say on those, to be honest, without getting into 

a real specific conversation today, if you have specific issues on those, contact 

your district managers or your regional persons for educational policy and 

development. Although we have Brian Gepard here, unless you want to give a 

different answer than I just gave.

Brian Gepard: Nope. Perfect.

Pat Sylvie: Or we have Mr. Lawrence, who is over EPD, unless you want to give a different 

answer than that. And a couple of these you would note, I didn't answer. Did we 

have the final favor out on Coburg? Is that out? No? Okay, somebody asked was 

the final favor report out on [inaudible 01:06:56]. That was accepted and I'm 

told, I'm looking around the room and the answer's no. But suffice you to know, 

we put a lot of time and attention in the fatal investigation report, as you saw 

invited in some of Marcus's presentation. So we try to get those out as quickly 

as we can, but in as thoughtful a manner, as accurately as we can and in a 

thoughtful manner as we can. I know sometimes it takes longer than we care for 

it to take, but we want you to know that we put... And I think that's... I think I 

went over all of them, and now I guess you can open them up.

Jeanette Galani...: Why don't we open it up for a few minutes for questions?

Pat Sylvie: Yeah.

Jeanette Galani...: Thank you.
Operator (Erika...: If you would like to ask a question, please press star zero on your telephone 

keypad now. An operator will take your name and place you into the queue in 

the order received. Once again, to ask a question, please press star zero on your 

phone now. One moment while we gather our questions. Our first question 

comes from Matt Stewart. Please state your question.

Matt Stewart: Hi, this is Matt Stewart with Vanderbilt Minerals. Thanks, Chris, Jeanette, and 

Pat for taking time today to cover things with us. Brian, it's nice to hear you in 

the background as well. So Pat and Chris, when we met at the Alliance meeting, 

the Essential Minerals Alliance meeting in, I think it was back in May, we had 

talked about the administration's concern over customer haul trucks and the 

potential for injuries among that group. In light of the power haulage initiative, 

has the administration seen any ongoing concerns there? Can you touch briefly 

on what your thoughts are on customer haul trucks?

Pat Sylvie: Well, and I think we hit on it early on that in... And I'm giving you calendar year 

now. From calendar year '21, and when we start giving statistics, I hesitate all 

the time in doing that. But from calendar year '21 to calendar year '22, we saw 

powered haulage accidents, fatal, I'm talking fatal now, go from 17 in '21 to four 

in '22. Yes, to four in '22, a significant improvement. And as Chris said, we don't 

give all the credit to us. We give the credit to the industry, to labor, to us 

working, to all of us working together.

And obviously some of that reduction included a lessening of accidents with 

respect to customer truck drivers. And I would say that some of that had to do 

with our initiatives on power haulage, as well as our enhanced enforcement 

program. But what I would just like to say to everybody on this call, that we 

approve of those of you who made this an initiative at your site, who 

experienced customer truck drivers. We appreciate the emphasis and the focus 

that you placed on it. So we appreciate you making it a priority as well as we 

have.

Matt Stewart: Good. But we shouldn't put our card down. I guess we all need to keep up from 

this fight. But it's good to hear that you've seen at least a lack of additional 

injuries. I hate to pat myself, or anybody else have them pat themselves on the 

back in this regard, but thanks for the update. Appreciate it.

Jeanette Galani...: Okay.

Operator (Erika...: Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star zero on your phone 

now. At this time you have no further questions.

Jeanette Galani...: Okay, great. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us. We will definitely try, 

in the future, there is a question here if we could try it and advance the

schedule dates. We will definitely try to do that. We appreciate that and we'll 

try to do that and throw out dates. But thank you once again everyone, and we 

will talk to you next quarter.
Pat Sylvie: Thank you everybody. Thank you for your time.

Operator (Erika...: This concludes today's meeting. Have a great day.