Mining Deaths Drop In 2012; No Pennsylvania Fatalities

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

February 1, 2013 | 11:51 AM

36 American miners died on the job in 2012 – an all-time low, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. As the Tribune-Review reports, none of those deaths occurred in Pennsylvania:

In Pennsylvania, the mining industry ended 2010 without a fatality for the first time and duplicated the feat in 2012.
A surface miner died in an accident in 2011, officials said. No underground miners have died in the state since June 2009, when Robert Maust, 54, of Uniontown died as a falling rock hit him in Consol Energy Inc.’s Bailey Mine in Wind Ridge, Greene County.
Joseph Sbaffoni, the state Bureau of Mine Safety director, said the improved safety record resulted from a commitment by miners, mine operators and state safety officials.