MSHA Mine Safety & Health Data Scraper

Extract mine safety and health data from the U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) database. This Actor downloads and parses the official MSHA bulk data files, covering over 91,000 mines, millions of violations, and hundreds of thousands of inspections reported under federal mining safety law.

MSHA data is a critical resource for mining industry compliance monitoring, workplace safety analysis, insurance risk assessment, and industrial supply chain due diligence. Every mine operating in the United States — coal, metal, and non-metal — is required by law to be registered and inspected by MSHA. This Actor makes that data instantly accessible in JSON, CSV, or Excel format.

Key Features

Feature	Description
Three datasets	Mines (registry), Violations (citations & penalties), Inspections (inspection events)
State filtering	Filter mines by US state abbreviation (WV, KY, PA, etc.)
91,000+ mines	Complete registry of all US mines under MSHA jurisdiction
Penalty data	Proposed penalties, current penalties, and amounts paid for violations
No authentication	Uses freely available MSHA public data — no API key needed
Automatic parsing	Downloads ZIP archives, extracts pipe-delimited CSV, and outputs clean JSON

What Data Can You Extract?

Mines Dataset

Field	Description
mineId	Unique MSHA mine identifier
mineName	Name of the mine
mineType	Surface or Underground
mineStatus	Active, Abandoned, Intermittent, etc.
operatorName	Current mine operator
controllerName	Controlling entity
state	US state abbreviation
county	County name
commodity	Primary commodity (Coal, Sand & Gravel, etc.)
latitude, longitude	GPS coordinates
avgMineEmployment	Average number of employees

Violations Dataset

Field	Description
violationNo	Unique violation number
mineId	Associated mine ID
violationIssueDt	Date violation was issued
proposedPenalty	Initial penalty amount in dollars
currentPenalty	Current penalty after adjustments
negligence	Negligence classification
gravity	Gravity of violation

Inspections Dataset

Field	Description
eventNo	Inspection event number
mineId	Associated mine ID
inspectionBeginDt	Inspection start date
inspectionEndDt	Inspection end date
inspType	Inspection type code
violationsIssued	Number of violations issued
totalViolations	Total violation count

How to Scrape MSHA Mine Safety Data

1. Go to this Actor's page on the Apify Store
2. Click "Start" to open the input form
3. Set your filters:
   • Select a Data Type: Mines, Violations, or Inspections
   • Enter a State abbreviation (e.g., WV for West Virginia) — or leave blank for all states
   • Set Max Results (default: 1,000; set to 0 for all records)
4. Click "Start" to run the Actor
5. Download your data in JSON, CSV, or Excel format from the Dataset tab

Input Example

{
    "dataType": "mines",
    "state": "WV",
    "maxResults": 500
}

Output Example

{
    "mineId": "4601432",
    "mineName": "BIRCH RIVER OPERATION",
    "mineType": "Surface",
    "mineStatus": "Active",
    "operatorName": "LEXINGTON COAL CO LLC",
    "controllerName": "FORESIGHT ENERGY LP",
    "state": "WV",
    "county": "Nicholas",
    "commodity": "Coal (Bituminous)",
    "latitude": "38.48861",
    "longitude": "-80.71083",
    "avgMineEmployment": "156"
}

Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-result pricing:

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.00005
Per result	$0.002

The MSHA data is free and public. You only pay for Apify compute resources plus the per-result fee above. A typical run of 1,000 mine records costs approximately $2.00 in Actor fees plus minimal compute costs.

Use Cases

• Mining Industry Compliance: Monitor mine safety records, violations, and penalties for regulatory compliance
• Insurance & Risk Assessment: Evaluate mine safety history for underwriting and premium calculations
• Equipment & Supply Sales: Identify active mines by commodity, state, and size for targeted B2B outreach
• Workplace Safety Research: Analyze violation trends, penalty amounts, and inspection patterns across the mining industry
• Environmental Analysis: Map mine locations and operations for environmental impact studies
• Investigative Journalism: Data-driven reporting on mining safety enforcement

Integrations

Connect this Actor to your existing workflows:

• Export to Google Sheets for collaborative analysis
• Send results to Slack or email for automated alerts
• Feed into Zapier, Make, or n8n for custom automation
• Use the Apify API to integrate directly with your application

FAQ

Q: How current is the data? A: MSHA updates the bulk data files regularly. The mines registry reflects the current status of all registered mines.

Q: What types of mines are covered? A: All mines under MSHA jurisdiction: coal mines, metal mines, non-metal mines (sand, gravel, limestone, etc.), and stone quarries.

Q: Can I filter violations by mine? A: The violations dataset includes a mineId field that you can use to cross-reference with the mines dataset. State filtering is available for the mines dataset.

Q: How large are the datasets? A: The mines dataset contains 91,000+ records. Violations and inspections contain millions of records — use the maxResults parameter to limit output.

Legal Disclaimer

This Actor accesses publicly available data from the MSHA Open Government Data portal, a free public service provided by the US Department of Labor. The data is in the public domain and freely available for any use.

This Actor does not bypass any authentication, does not violate any terms of service, and respects server resources. The Actor is provided as-is without warranty. Users are responsible for ensuring their use of the data complies with applicable laws and regulations.

For questions or support, please open an issue on this Actor's page.