NMA Celebrates National Safety Month

June marks National Safety Month, and as good neighbors, the National Mining Association (NMA) recognizes its inherent responsibility to the health and safety of its mining employees and the surrounding communities. People are at the core of U.S. minerals mining, and nothing is more important to U.S. mining than the safety of its workers and its communities.

To ensure the safety of miners, NMA endorses CORESafety®, a safety and health management initiative specifically designed for U.S. mining operations. Initiated in 2011, CORESafety’s objective is to provide a comprehensive pathway to eliminate fatalities and to reduce the rate of mining injuries by 50 percent within five years. CORESafety allows companies to adapt and tailor to specific operations a systems approach for managing safety and health in order to drive continuous performance improvement.. NMA’s president and CEO, Hal Quinn, explains,

“We developed a curriculum for safety that we believe is more contemporary; it’s not just about ‘let’s study the mine safety law.’ It’s more about ‘here’s the tools you use to sustain continuous improvement in safety.’ Our view is ‘how well you want to run your business starts with how well you protect your people.’”

In addition to the safety of its workers, NMA also works to keep the communities in which it operates safe from environmental harm. NMA’s member companies invest heavily in the research and development of new technologies and processes to minimize environmental impact. In fact, in 2012, the mining industry introduced the Environmental Management System, which provides mining companies a roadmap to navigate regulatory processes and continually improve environmental performance. Even before a mining project can begin, a plan to restore the proposed mine site to another beneficial use is developed and approved by regulatory agencies. Over the past 30 years, more than 2.6 million acres of land across the country have been reclaimed and restored to create parks, fishing holes, wildlife habitats and more to serve local communities.

Watch our video below to learn more about NMA’s commitment to safety and to being a good neighbor.