Abstract: This paper studies the current status and problems of the metal mine safety and environment bystatistics and comparison methodology in order to make a development program on the safety andenvironment for metal mines. In a macro view point, some issues on the safety and environment status aswell as the research directions are analyzed. The results show that there are many pressing problems onthe safety and environment in metal mines due to more complicated mining techniques. There are smallnumber of prospective, basic, marginal and imaginative studies in mining safety and environmentresearches with the majority research projects concentrating on the practical engineering problems of themining safety and environment. The key research areas and technologies on metal resources exploitation inthe middle and long term should be determined by researchers.