How Peru and the United States enforce mining safety
Peru divides mining-safety enforcement among four authorities and publishes little of the result; the United States gives one agency, MSHA, the whole job and publishes nearly all of it weekly. OSINERGMIN polices infrastructure and operations safety in medium and large mining only, inspects under an internally approved annual plan with no statutory frequency, sets fines in UIT from an economic model, and hears appeals inside the regulator at TASTEM. MSHA must inspect every underground mine at least four times a year and every surface mine twice, proposes dollar penalties from point tables capped at $90,649 per violation and $332,376 for flagrant violations, and its contested penalties are decided by FMSHRC, an independent commission. Mining Incidents indexes both records, including 2,479 OSINERGMIN sanction resolutions from 2001 to 2026.
Every legal claim on this page traces to a statute, regulation or the agencies' own documents, listed in the sources at the bottom. Every Peruvian figure is read live from the records we index.
Safety of infrastructure and operations in medium and large mining (Ley 29901, DS 024-2016-EM). The sanctions on this site's Peru pages are this lane.
Occupational safety and health in the same mines: the labor inspectorate's lane (Ley 29981). It publishes no current bulk dataset of named-employer sanctions.
Regional governments supervise and sanction small-scale and artisanal mining, where a large share of Peru's mining deaths occur.
Environmental enforcement in mining since 2010, with a public register of sanctions keyed by tax ID.
MSHA covers safety and health at every mine in the country, coal and metal alike, of any size, under the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977.
Environment is a separate lane (EPA and the states), as in Peru; everything else that Peru splits four ways sits in one agency.
| Dimension | Peru (OSINERGMIN) | United States (MSHA) |
|---|---|---|
| Who inspects | OSINERGMIN for infrastructure and operations safety in medium and large mining; SUNAFIL for occupational health and safety; regional offices for small and artisanal mining. | MSHA alone: every mine, every size, safety and health together. |
| Inspection mandate | None. Inspections follow an agency-approved annual plan plus event-driven visits after accidents, emergencies and complaints (Res. 208-2020-OS/CD art. 9.3). | Statutory floor: every underground mine inspected in its entirety at least four times a year, every surface mine at least twice (Mine Act 103(a)). |
| Unit of enforcement | A sanctioning procedure ends in one resolution that can decide several infractions at once, each with its own outcome. | Each violation gets its own citation or order at inspection time, and its own penalty. |
| Beyond fines | Discretionary safety measures: temporary stoppage of works, suspension of activities, temporary closure (Res. 208-2020-OS/CD art. 37). | Withdrawal orders pull miners out immediately: failure to abate (104(b)), unwarrantable failure (104(d)), imminent danger (107(a)); a pattern of violations escalates further. |
| How a fine is set | In UIT, Peru's yearly revalued tax unit, from an economic model of illicit benefit and detection probability (Res. 120-2021-OS/CD), against the infraction table of Res. 123-2024-OS/CD. | In dollars, from the point tables of 30 CFR Part 100 against six statutory criteria: history, size, negligence, gravity, good faith and ability to continue in business. |
| Maximum fine | The infraction table's top band is 10,000 UIT (about S/ 55 million in 2026) for the gravest infractions. No statute sets a general ceiling. | $90,649 per violation at regular assessment; $332,376 for a flagrant violation. Frozen at 2025 levels through 2026. |
| Where appeals go | Inside the regulator: TASTEM, OSINERGMIN's own appeals tribunal, decides in second and final administrative instance. The window to appeal is 15 business days. | Outside the regulator: FMSHRC, an independent commission, from an administrative law judge to five presidentially appointed commissioners to the federal courts of appeals. |
| When a penalty is final | The resolution is the sanction; a challenge can confirm, reduce or annul it, infraction by infraction, and courts may still review after TASTEM. | A proposed penalty becomes final only if the operator does not contest within 30 days; contested cases are decided by FMSHRC. |
| What is published | The public sanctions list stopped in December 2019. Everything after exists publicly only because of a records request. | Essentially everything, continuously: violations, inspections, penalties, accidents and employment in flat files refreshed every week. |
| Which mines are covered | Medium and large mining only. Small-scale mining (up to 350 t/day and 2,000 ha) and artisanal mining (up to 25 t/day and 1,000 ha) answer to regional governments. | All mines, from the largest coal complex to a sand-and-gravel pit. |
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S/ is the Peruvian sol, Peru's currency. The gray dollar figures are approximate conversions at S/ 3.35 per US$1 (August 2026).OSINERGMIN published its mining sanctions for eighteen years and stopped in December 2019. The agency kept sanctioning; the record kept existing; it just stopped being public. The 2020-2026 resolutions on this site exist publicly because we requested them under Peru's public-information law (SAIP), and we re-request the continuation every quarter.
MSHA publishes its full enforcement record continuously: the open-data flat files are refreshed every Friday, and any mine's history is a lookup away. The difference is not what the regulators know; it is what the public can check.
Across the 847 infraction line items of 2020-2026, OSINERGMIN's own outcome labels record the fate of the operator's defense or appeal, not of the charge.
| Resolution issued (EMITIDA) | 557 |
| Challenge rejected, fine stands (INFUNDADA) | 259 |
| Challenge succeeded in whole or part (FUNDADA, FUNDADA EN PARTE) | 13 |
| Infraction dismissed without sanction (ARCHIVADA) | 14 |
| Resolution or procedure voided (NULIDAD) | 4 |
EMITIDA means the resolution was issued; whether it also means unchallenged or not yet final is not defined in any OSINERGMIN source we could reach, so this page claims no more than that.
- No rate comparison. We hold no denominator for Peru: no mine census, employment or hours data.
- No claim that either country inspects more. We hold Peru's sanctions, not its inspection counts.
- No total for mining-safety enforcement in Peru. Our lane excludes SUNAFIL, the environmental lane and all small and artisanal mining.
- No one-currency fine ranking. The two systems price violations on different theories, and a UIT fine converts to soles at the year it is paid, not the year it was imposed.
- No completeness guarantee for 2020-2026. The set is one agency's answer to one request, with no public registry to reconcile against. That is the point of the transparency gap, and also its limit.
- Peruvian figures are as decided at the administrative level; court review after TASTEM is possible and untracked. US proposed penalties can be contested and reduced.
Every legal claim above traces to one of these texts, verified 2026-08-31. Peruvian figures are read live from the records we index; their provenance is on the Peru record page.
- Resolución 208-2020-OS/CD, Reglamento de Fiscalización y Sanción (El Peruano)
- Resolución 123-2024-OS/CD, cuadro de tipificación de infracciones en seguridad minera (El Peruano)
- DS 024-2016-EM, Reglamento de Seguridad y Salud Ocupacional en Minería
- Lineamientos Resolutivos del TASTEM (OSINERGMIN)
- TUO de la Ley General de Minería, DS 014-92-EM, art. 91 (estratos PPM/PMA)
- Mine Act §103, 30 U.S.C. 813 (inspection mandate)
- Mine Act §104, 30 U.S.C. 814 (citations, withdrawal orders, POV)
- Mine Act §110, 30 U.S.C. 820 (penalty criteria)
- 90 FR 1862, DOL civil-penalty inflation adjustments for 2025 (30 CFR 100.3, 100.4, 100.5)
- MSHA: 2025 penalty amounts carried into 2026
- FMSHRC, the independent review commission
- MSHA open data (weekly flat files)