Description: Labor-Public-Applied Economics Workshop

Location: 368A Heady Hall

Contact: John Winters

Title: Toxic Tradeoffs: Impact of Environmental Regulations on Workplace Safety in Mining

Abstract: Environmental regulations reduce ambient pollution exposure, which may benefit workers at regulated firms; on the other hand, new compliance costs may crowd out safety investments at firms, increasing the risk of worker injuries. This paper estimates the short-run net effects of the 1990s Clean Air Act (CAA) PM10 standards on workplace injuries in the mining sector by employing Difference-in-Differences, using a panel linking Mine Safety and Health Administration mine-year injury records to novel sub-county PM10 nonattainment boundaries for 1983–1997. I find that serious nonattainment designation increased workplace injuries by 3.7 per 100 full-time workers, and severe injuries by 0.972 per 100 full-time workers, imposing an economic cost on workers of roughly $0.20 billion (1990 dollars) per year. These estimates persist across specifications and are driven by reduced safety compliance, increased work hours, and overexertion among retained staff. The findings reveal thorny distributional tradeoffs: health benefits of the 1990 CAA Amendments are large but diffuse, while safety costs are small and concentrated among vulnerable, less-experienced workers.