One Hundred Years of Federal Mining Safety and Health Research

Figure 20. The USBM’s Forbes Avenue facility under construction, Pittsburgh, PA, circa 1915.
Figure 21. The USBM’s completed Forbes Avenue building, Pittsburgh, PA, 1917.
2.8 Early Statistics on Mining Fatalities and Production
In 1916, the Bureau published a report documenting mine safety trends from the earliest
published reports to that time [Fay 1916]. In particular, this report compiled accident statistics
from the states that had inspected mines from 1870 to 1914. Pennsylvania had fatality records
reaching back to 1870 for anthracite mines and to 1877 for bituminous mines. By the time the
Bureau was established in 1910, almost 90 percent of coal production came from states with
mine inspectors who reported coal mine fatalities from their states.
The Bureau’s report calculated that from 1839 to 1914, the total number of coal mining fatalities
reported was 53,078 [Fay 1916]. The report also included USGS data on coal mine production
and employment. Based on these data, the Bureau estimated that the number of fatalities in all
U.S. coal mines up to that time totaled 61,187.
Complete records for coal mine employment first became available in 1889, when the number of
men employed in U.S. coal mines was 311,717. In that year, 90.8 percent of miners and 90.5
percent of coal production came from states with mine inspectors who reported mining fatalities.
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