occupational health
Mining loves a neat correlation – tonnes per shift, dollars per ounce, emissions per unit, but as Peter Burton pointed out at AusIMM’s Critical Minerals 2025 in Perth, one thing that refuses to fit a tidy graph is safety performance.
A series of recent mine safety incidents in New South Wales and Queensland has reinforced ongoing concerns about worker safety in both underground and surface coal operations.
Queensland’s Coal Mines Inspectorate has warned that coal mining operations are continuing to report repeat safety incidents, with fatigue, dust exposure, fires on mobile equipment, and falls from plant access systems among the most common issues identified in its September 2025 incident periodical.
In mining, some of the biggest risks don’t come from broken equipment or unstable ground - they come from the way our brains are wired.
New rules, stricter enforcement and a state-wide crackdown are forcing South Australian mines and quarries to radically rethink how they manage crystalline silica exposure - or risk being shut down.
A new study in Occupational Medicine has found that respirable crystalline silica (RCS) exposures in the Western Australian mining industry are now so low that the risk of silicosis is negligible - even in job categories traditionally considered high risk.
A catastrophic tyre explosion that seriously injured two quarry workers was caused by a structural failure in the sidewall of a truck tyre and a series of systemic safety lapses, according to a detailed investigation released by the NSW Resources Regulator.
In an era of advanced underground automation and high-tech dust suppression systems, one of the most effective solutions for a pervasive mining problem—stope dust—has emerged not from a manufacturer, but from a loader operator’s workshop.
Western Australia’s mining safety watchdog has released its June incident report, revealing a combined 338 notifiable and reportable incidents across the state’s operations, including several serious occurrences resulting in injuries and substantial corporate penalties.
Alcoa of Australia has been fined $400,000 and ordered to pay court costs after a caustic soda spill at its Kwinana alumina refinery injured multiple workers—including school students on work experience placement.
