Data / Mines / Metal mines

Metal ore mines in the US: 317 open mines and MSHA citations

MSHA lists 317 open metal ore mines in the US, run by 250 operators and employing 43,346 people. Since January 1, 2022 its inspectors issued 29,453 citations and orders there with $30,031,335 in proposed penalties, and operators reported 4,891 injury or illness cases, 14 of them fatal. The operators with the most open mines are Nevada Gold Mines LLC; Doe Run Company; Asarco LLC, a Delaware Limited Liability Company. Data from MSHA, November 6, 2026.

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Open mines

317

Operators

250

Employees

43,346

Active

173

Intermittent

74

NonProducing

38

Temporarily Idled

32

Mines run by individuals, counted and not listed

26

Citations and orders since January 1, 2022

29,453

Significant and substantial

4,147 (14.1%)

Closure orders

737

High negligence or reckless

1,794

Proposed penalties

$30,031,335

Amount paid so far

$23,071,512

Inspections

6,939

Inspector hours on site

165,703

Citations per inspection

4.24 (all mines 2.30)

Accident reports

5,189

Injury and illness cases

4,891

Fatalities

14

Latest MSHA record

November 5, 2026

Operators with the most open mines

Ranked by open mines, then by citations. Sole proprietors and individuals are not listed.

Operators with the most citations

Citations and orders issued since January 1, 2022 at their open mines here.

Mines with the most citations

Open mines, ranked by citations and orders since January 1, 2022.

Main commodities

States

Citations and injury cases by year

Calendar years since 2022; 2026 runs to the date of the MSHA files.

Standards cited most at metal ore mines

Sections of Title 30 of the Code of Federal Regulations named on the citations, with the part each belongs to.

Injury and illness cases at metal ore mines

Accident reports by degree of injury, as the operator reported them to MSHA.

What the accident reports at metal ore mines describe

Accident classification, as MSHA codes the circumstances that contributed most directly.

Equipment named in accident reports at metal ore mines

Updated November 6, 2026. Read from US Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Open Government Data Sets. US government work, public domain. Counts come from the MSHA files published on November 6, 2026. An open mine is one MSHA lists as Active, Intermittent, New Mine, Temporarily Idled or NonProducing; 13,673 were open that day. Citations, penalties, inspections and accident reports run from January 1, 2022. A citation is an inspector's allegation and an operator can contest it; the penalty is the amount MSHA first proposed, before any contest or settlement. An operator is the legal entity MSHA assesses, and a parent company is its controller. Mines run by sole proprietors or by individuals are counted in every total and are not named. This page uses MSHA data and is not endorsed or certified by MSHA. Free to reuse with credit to SpecStream under CC BY 4.0. Spot a wrong value? Write to [email protected] with the link to this page.