Mining Incidents

Trends

How recorded US mining fatalities and reportable incidents have changed over time. 1,000 incidents, 3 fatal, on file from 2000 to 2026.

Year over year

Iron = fatalities · dust = all incidents
2000
69 (1f)
2001
58
2002
44
2003
59
2004
62
2005
47
2006
55
2007
64
2008
46
2009
39 (1f)
2010
45
2011
45
2012
30
2013
39 (1f)
2014
38
2015
39
2016
21
2017
25
2018
27
2019
23
2020
21
2021
23
2022
14
2023
19
2024
23
2025
18
2026
7

By decade

Top fatality causes per decade

Years with the most fatalities

  1. 0120001fatal69 total
  2. 0220091fatal39 total
  3. 0320131fatal39 total
  4. 0420010fatal58 total
  5. 0520020fatal44 total
  6. 0620030fatal59 total
  7. 0720040fatal62 total
  8. 0820050fatal47 total

Maximum single-year fatality count: 1.

Source: US Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) public accident records, kept current weekly. Incidents are bucketed by cal_yr as MSHA reports it; some very old records have null years and are excluded from the per-year aggregation.