I see you looked at the first mining safety site listed on the web. Without going deeply into the data here is the comparison. In 1995 there were just shy of 143k miners working. They mined just shy of 200 million tons of coal. In 2005 there were 103k miners mining just shy of 146 mill tons of coal. The percentage of deaths per ton of coal mined and the no of mine workers equals .o32% in 1995 vs .022% in 2002. There are numbers of years during the Clinton administration where the average mine death per worker/tons mined is lower than the .022% figure. 1995 was a year in which; due to a spike in coal prices there were mines opened that were not safe and did not comply with the Mine Safety Act of 1977 and 1985. There is much more to this story but don't quote the figures for one year like somehow that tells the whole story.