safety
Safety Matters
Safety is a guiding principle at Arch Coal and
our subsidiary operations. Our top priority is
making sure that every miner returns home safe
and healthy at the end of every shift. For the
most recent calendar year (2011), our lost-time
incident rate of 0.68 was our best safety rate
on record and 3.5 times lower than
the industry average of 2.44 lost-time injuries per 200,000
hours worked. (*Source: MSHA Coal Controlling
Report, MSHA Mine Injury and Worktime 4Q11)
AWARD-WINNING, PROACTIVE SAFETY
PRACTICES
Over the years, we have been recognized for
safety, including MSHA's top national honor - the
Sentinels of Safety Award - in 2001, 2007,
2008 and two in 2011. We believe our accomplishments are a
testament to Arch's deep-rooted culture of
treating safety as a value and the strong
participation of our employees in the process.
Our mines adopted a behavior-based safety program (BBS) in 2006 that enlists virtually every one of our 7,400 employees to identify at-risk behaviors before an incident occurs. As a result of BBS and other proactive, upstream safety measures, Arch is the safety leader among our peer group of diversified, U.S. coal companies.
IN PURSUIT OF A PERFECT ZERO
The
ultimate goal of Arch and our
subsidiary operations is A Perfect
Zero.
This means zero safety incidents and
zero environmental incidents. We already
pride ourselves on industry leading
safety and environmental performance
rates. But we believe we can and should do better.
With a focus on prevention, we will
achieve A Perfect Zero. In
fact, four of our operations and
facilities achieved
A Perfect Zero last year.