Focusing on coal miners’ occupational disease issues: A comparative analysis between China and the United States

Abstract

The trend in Chinese coal miners’ occupational diseases in the last ten years was studied by comparison with US reference data. It showed that the legally recorded occupational diseases of American coal miners had a wider range than that of China. Even so, the total number of occupational diseases and the number of occupational diseases per million tons of coal produced in Chinese coal mines were 32.9, 18.3 times higher than those in the US. In addition, the number of cases of coal miners’ occupational disease was, on average, 54.08% of the total number of cases in industry as a whole, which was 12.6 times more than that in the US. The occupational disease rate per thousand coal miners in China recently increased, and reached a new peak in 2010, while showing a downward trend in the US. Pneumoconiosis was the main occupational disease of Chinese coal miners with over 75%. In 2008, 2009, and 2010, the number of coal miners suffering from pneumoconiosis reached 4311, 5997 and 12,208, respectively, and accounted for 78.79%, 79.95% and 87.41% of the total occupational diseases, respectively. Compared to the US, Chinese coal miners were in a much worse occupational disease status. Based on US experience, some improvement strategies were proposed.