SPOKANE, Wash. -- Mining, long one of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the country, is trying to clean up its image.
A recent survey for the National Mining Association found that Americans have a generally favorable opinion of mining, the Washington, D.C.-based trade group said.
Part of the reason is the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which made many people realize the country is vulnerable to outside forces, said Carol Raulston, vice president of communications for the association. While the poll did not specifically ask about terrorism, the association is making that deduction, Raulston said.
"There is very strong support across the country for using minerals found here in this country," Raulston said. "There is no support for relying on international sources for those."
The March survey of registered voters was the association's first national look at attitudes on mining, Raulston said. The industry will use the survey to better tailor its messages with the public and politicians.
"We hope to build support for mining," Raulston said.
"In the past we were putting out information that people were not that interested in, or using a lot of technical industry terminology that was not meaningful to people," Raulston said.
Mining has long been an industry on the decline in the United States, with many companies going overseas to find and develop new mines. High costs and tough environmental rules are the main reason for the exodus.
Among the key findings of the survey, people who do not live near mining sites base many of their attitudes on conditions in the 1930s or 1940s, on old labor disputes, or from movies like "Coal Miner's Daughter."
"They are really wedded to old images," Raulston said. That undercut support for mining, but also provided opportunities to educate the public, she said.
People who live in mining districts, which are mostly in rural areas, are more familiar with technological improvements and environmental reclamation work, she said. They are more supportive of the industry.
There is wide understanding across the country about the importance of products that are mined, such as gold, copper and titanium, to computers, aerospace and a wide range of high-tech industries.
"People don't have to be educated on that, they understand it," Raulston said.
The association has already redesigned its Web site to reflect lessons from the survey, she said. New advertising is also being developed.
The survey found that radio ads pointing out all the products made possible by mining, and which focus on hardships people would suffer without those products, were not popular with the public because they were considered threatening, Raulston said.
"The survey opened a lot of eyes," said Laura Skaer, head of the Northwest Mining Association in Spokane, at whose convention many of the findings were released last month.
The survey was conducted by telephone in March by Market Strategies of Alexandria, Va. The company questioned 800 registered voters nationwide by telephone and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
