Evaluation of risk of occupational injuries among underground coal mine workers through multinomial logit analysis

The purpose of this study was to assess the risk of injuries to miners, accounting for their individual and workplace characteristics. The binary and multinomial logit models were applied to measure the risk of injuries to miners working in a group of underground coal mines in India. The binary logit model measures the risk of injuries to the miners; whereas, the multinomial logit model measures the risk of severe and reportable injuries. The study revealed that both the individual and workplace characteristics of the miners have significant effect on the risk of occurrence of injuries. Of the individual variables, while the age and experience of the miners do not have any significant effect on the risk of occurrence of injuries, the occupation categories show that the face workers are more risky in the occurrence of an injury. Among the workplace variables, the workplace location categories show that the outby-face location is more accident prone. (C) 1999 National Safety Council and Elsevier Science Ltd.