There but for the grace of God go we all: MSHA on mine safety

No doubt the facts are complex and at least can be argued either way.   Yet this morning’s two news reports, make you wonder about the tendency for people to do wrong:

W.R. Grace and asbestos:  “The U.S. Supreme Court Monday refused to hear an appeal by W.R. Grace & Co. in a case that involves criminal charges brought by the government against the company and six of its executives for Clean Air Act violations in the release of asbestos from a vermiculite mine in Libby, Montana.”

MSHA Acts:  “Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration officials said Thursday they told 16 U.S. mining companies they have patterns of violating health and safety rules and warned them to clean up their acts or face heightened enforcement.   All but two of the companies operate coal mines or processing plants, the majority of them in Kentucky and West Virginia, MSHA said. Also receiving warnings were a Kentucky limestone operation and a Michigan iron ore mine.

In the W.R. Grace case “The defendants were charged with knowingly combining, conspiring and agreeing among themselves and others to release asbestos into the air, defrauding the U.S. government and agencies responsible for administering laws to protect public health and safety, and conspiring “to conceal and misrepresent the hazardous nature of the tremolite asbestos contaminated vermiculite, thereby enriching defendants and others.”

In the case of the MSHA actions, “The federal action comes as coal mining fatalities are increasing in the United States. As of June 16, 15 coal miners had died in 2008, compared with six by the same time last year.”

Granted all are trying to improve, or at least that is how the average mine communications officer and the average gulible reporter would have us believe.   How else to credit these statements: 

The trend prompted MSHA, the National Mining Association, the Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association and the United Mine Workers union to send a safety letter to mine operators, miners and contractors Thursday.

“With a joint effort by all to refocus on safety, a repeat of these accidents could be prevented,” the letter said. “We are urging everyone to maintain a focus on safety by trying to anticipate hazards and, most importantly, thinking before acting and avoiding shortcuts.”

While the W.R. Grace acts occurred many years ago, the MSHA acts are current.  It leaves you with no other conclusion but that in the absence of informed unioins and vigerous independent regulators, there will always be people in mining and every other industry who will break the law, skirt the law, do unsafe things in the name of profits, and put workers at risk for personal benefit. 

Altruism may be in our genes as an ordinary outcome of group or societal evolution.  But there is also the “me-first” instinct that seeks opportunities even to the detriment of others. 

Religion clearly is no help in enforcing human decency.  It is generally used only to control people who think differently, not necessarily correctly or incorrectly and generally correctly.   

So we are left with unions and regulators. 

And as we have seen so dramatically when political considerations come first, even regulators are reduced to impotence in saving miner’s lives.  It is no monument to those already dead to see MSHA roused from its political stupor now acting proactively.  We are glad they are, but all this action tells us is that we must be ever vigilant to see a backsliding, political interference, and personal interest transcending the miners’ safety. 

And to my friends who told me so many years ago that the Clean Air Act would destroy the American economy, and who now tell me that carbon emissions control will do the same, I reply:  stay in your university office and be quiet, for us bloggers generate more ideas than ever you do, and yours are likely to be self-serving, not miner serving.   And if you stay quiet, we will not drag up the W.R. Grace affair or any of your other academic failures to see the signs, to warn, or to act with the independence society affords you.