Abstract
Abstract The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) requires mine operators to report all diagnosed or compensated cases of occupational hearing loss to MSHA. All hearing loss cases reported to MSHA from 1980 through December 1994 (2365) were examined. After separating the hearing loss cases by causal factor, a population of 2287 cases of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) remained for further study. This study was conducted to identify the commodities and states with the highest number of NIHL cases. The NIHL cases were separated by coal (1572 cases) and metal/nonmetal mining (715 cases). Between 1980 and 1994 the average employment in coal mining was 186,950 miners. This compares with an average of 233,420 in metal/nonmetal mining. All but one NIHL case in coal mining were associated with bituminous coal. NIHL cases were reported to be associated with 25 metal/nonmetal commodities. The three metal/nonmetal commodities with the highest number of NIHL cases were molybdenum (142 cases), limestone (103...
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