Mining Publication: Injuries Associated with Continuous Miners, Shuttle Cars, Load-haul-dump, and Personnel Transport in New South Wales Underground Coal Mines

Working with or near underground coal mining equipment is inherently hazardous owing to the multiple sources of injurious energies and adverse environmental conditions. Australian compensation statistics suggest that 22% of all lost time claims in the mining industry are associated with mobile plant and transport. A previous analysis of injury data obtained over 10 years from six mines suggested that the equipment most commonly involved in these injuries were continuous miners (CMs), shuttle cars (SCs), load-haul-dump (LHD) vehicles and personnel transport (PT). The present paper reports an analysis of the narrative text fields accompanying all reports of injuries associated with these equipment types in New South Wales (NSW) underground coal mines in the three years to June 2005.