MSHA Mining Safety & Health Data

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Comprehensive mining safety intelligence from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Searches 86,000+ mines across the US and joins data from 5 DOL API datasets — mines, violations, inspections, accidents, and assessments — with automated risk scoring based on fatalities, S&S violations, withdrawal orders, and penalty history.

What It Does

This actor queries the DOL Open Data Portal API to build rich mine safety profiles:

1. Searches mines by name, operator, controller, state, type (Coal/Metal), status, or commodity
2. Joins violations — citations, orders, safeguards with S&S flags, negligence levels, and penalties
3. Joins inspections — regular, spot, complaint, impact inspections with violations found and on-site hours
4. Joins accidents — fatalities, injuries, lost workdays with narratives and classifications
5. Calculates risk scores — weighted algorithm considering fatalities (40pts), orders (10pts each), S&S violations (3pts each), high negligence (8pts each), large penalties, and violation-to-employee ratios

Key Features

• Multi-dataset joining — Automatically correlates data across 5 MSHA datasets by mine_id
• Risk scoring — Four-tier risk assessment (Critical/High/Medium/Low) with detailed risk factor breakdown
• Comprehensive summaries — Violation, inspection, and accident summaries with breakdowns by type
• Flexible filtering — Search by any combination of mine name, operator, state, type, commodity, date range
• Rate limit handling — Exponential backoff with staggered parallel requests to respect DOL API limits
• Dry run mode — Returns realistic sample data without API calls (default behavior)

Input Parameters

Output Format

Each mine record includes:

{
"mineId":"4601432",
"mineName":"EAGLE BUTTE MINE",
"mineType":"Coal",
"mineClassification":"Surface",
"operatorName":"EAGLE SPECIALTY MATERIALS LLC",
"controllerName":"EAGLE SPECIALTY MATERIALS LLC",
"state":"WY",
"county":"CAMPBELL",
"latitude":44.21,
"longitude":-105.38,
"status":"Active",
"employeeCount":320,
"hoursPerYear":640000,
"sicDescription":"Bituminous Coal and Lignite Surface Mining",
"primaryCommodity":"Bituminous",
"violations":[
{
"violationNumber":"8765432",
"section":"77.1607(b)",
"sectionTitle":"Loading and haulage - moving equipment",
"citationOrderSafeguard":"Citation",
"significantAndSubstantial":true,
"negligence":"Moderate",
"proposedPenalty":4416
}
],
"violationSummary":{
"total":2,
"citations":1,
"orders":1,
"significantAndSubstantial":2,
"totalProposedPenalties":27872,
"byNegligence":{"Moderate":1,"High":1}
},
"inspections":[
{
"eventNumber":"E001234",
"beginDate":"2024-11-10",
"inspectionTypeDescription":"Regular Safety/Health",
"violationsFound":2,
"onSiteHours":48
}
],
"accidents":[
{
"accidentDate":"2024-06-12",
"degreeOfInjuryDescription":"Days Away From Work (DAFW)",
"classification":"Powered Haulage",
"daysLost":45,
"narrative":"Employee was struck by a loaded haul truck..."
}
],
"riskScore":37,
"riskLevel":"Medium",
"riskFactors":[
"1 withdrawal order(s) (+10)",
"2 S&S violation(s) (+6)",
"1 high negligence violation(s) (+8)"
]
}

Risk Scoring Algorithm

Risk levels: Critical (≥100) · High (≥60) · Medium (≥30) · Low (<30)

Example Searches

Find all active coal mines in West Virginia:

{
"apiKey":"YOUR_KEY",
"dryRun":false,
"state":"WV",
"mineType":"C",
"mineStatus":"Active",
"maxResults":200
}

Look up a specific mine with full history:

{
"apiKey":"YOUR_KEY",
"dryRun":false,
"mineId":"4601432",
"maxViolationsPerMine":500,
"maxInspectionsPerMine":200,
"maxAccidentsPerMine":200
}

Search gold mines with recent violations only:

{
"apiKey":"YOUR_KEY",
"dryRun":false,
"commodity":"Gold",
"mineType":"M",
"dateFrom":"2024-01-01",
"maxResults":50
}

Find mines by operator:

{
"apiKey":"YOUR_KEY",
"dryRun":false,
"operatorName":"PEABODY",
"includeAccidents":true,
"maxResults":100
}

Data Sources

This actor queries 5 datasets from the DOL Open Data Portal:

Additional supporting datasets available: contractor/operator employment, controller history, commodity lookup.

API Key

Register for a free DOL API key at dataportal.dol.gov/registration. The key provides access to all DOL Open Data Portal datasets (MSHA, OSHA, WHD, etc.).

Use Cases

• Mining company due diligence — Assess safety records before acquisition or investment
• Insurance underwriting — Evaluate mining operations for workers' comp and liability policies
• Regulatory compliance — Monitor violation trends and inspection frequency
• Investigative journalism — Research mine safety records and fatality patterns
• Legal research — Find citation and penalty history for mining litigation
• ESG analysis — Environmental, Social, Governance scoring for mining companies
• Government oversight — Track enforcement patterns across mining districts

Technical Notes

• The DOL API has aggressive rate limits. The actor uses 500ms delays between requests and exponential backoff on 429 responses.
• Violation, inspection, and accident fetches are staggered (1s apart) to avoid concurrent rate limiting.
• Mines are sorted by employee count descending (largest mines first) when no specific search criteria is provided.
• Results are sorted by risk score descending after processing.
• The mine_id field is the primary join key across all datasets.