By most measures, coal and other types of mining are safer today than they were 10 years ago.

But statistics may not tell the whole story. There are differences in the ways agencies tally the numbers and in how they can be interpreted. As Mark Twain said, there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics.

Moreover, there's always the concern that some accidents aren't reported, either, because workers are afraid of being punished or because companies want to appear safer than they really are.

But you can't hide a body. The deaths of 12 miners at International Coal Group's Sago Mine in West Virginia rivets attention on workplace safety because a large fatal accident, like an airplane crash, draws big headlines.

"When an airline goes down, you don't damn the entire aviation industry. You look at what went wrong in that particular case," said Bristol Voss, president of Allmining.com, an online publication for mine managers.

Based on federal government statistics, Mr. Voss pointed out, more than 20 times more workers died in 2004 from fishing, hunting, farming and related occupations than died from coal mining.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 5,703 workplace fatalities in 2004, or 4.1 for every 100,000 workers. Of those, 659 involved agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting compared with 152 deaths for all types of mining, including the extraction of oil and natural gas.

Coal miners accounted for 26 fatalities, compared with 94 among roofers and 1,224 among all construction workers. About the same number of coal miners were killed in each of the previous two years, down from 41 in 1994, when a total of 6,632 workers were killed on the job.

On the other hand, the labor bureau's statistics also show that mining is the second most deadly industry in terms of deaths per 100,000 workers, topped only by agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting. For all types of mining, there were 28.3 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2004 compared with 30.1 deaths in agriculture.

But then again, individual occupations are more hazardous. There were 92.4 deaths in 2004 for every 100,000 logging workers, the same rate as for aircraft pilots and flight engineers. The rate for structural iron and steel workers was 47.

Most experts believe two other statistics -- the injury rate and the lost workday rate -- are more accurate measures of workplace safety. Excluding oil and gas workers, the mining industry reported 4.3 injuries for every 200,000 hours worked in 2004 compared with a private industry average of 4.8, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The rate for the construction industry was 6.4 and it was 6.6 for manufacturing.

Figures from the Mine Safety and Health Administration show the coal industry's injury rate has gone down in recent years. The industry reported five injuries for every 200,000 hours worked in 2004, down from 5.4 the prior year and 8.2 in 1995. Over that period, the number of coal miners declined 18 percent to 108,497 while coal production increased 8 percent to 1.1 billion tons.

The lost work day rate measures the number of instances that resulted in a worker taking days off because of a work-related injury or illness. For private sector workers, on average, the rate was 1.4 for every 200,000 hours worked in 2004. The rate for all types of coal mining -- 3.6 -- was nearly three times the private industry average.

That still makes it safer than hog and pig farming, which had a lost work day rate of 4.4. However, the rate for underground bituminous coal miners like those at the Sago Mine was 5.4.

The numbers indicate coal mining is getting safer, but that many other industries do a much better job of safeguarding their workers, even those that face similar challenges from heavy equipment and difficult working environments.

Alcoa, one of the safest U.S. companies, had a lost work day rate of 0.09 in 2004.