Abstract: In order to gain a deeper understanding of the industry’s risk status and assist in risk decision-making, based on the acceptable risk theory, we use two “five-year plans” (“Eleventh Five-Year Plan” and “Twelfth Five-Year Plan”) as the time periods to collect accident data of coal mines. Meanwhile, acceptable risk criteria for the coal industry is established by average individual risk(AIR) value method and cumulative frequency of accident-deaths number (FN) curve method. And we research on the application of acceptable risk criteria for the coal industry: compared horizontally the risk levels of coal mine, chemical industry and other industries based on acceptable risk, analyzed the optimal safety investment in the current form of coal mine industry based on the acceptable risk-life quality index, and proposed a semi-quantitative risk assessment method for coal mine production based on acceptable risk and fuzzy AHP theory to comprehensively assess personal risks and social risks of coal mine.