One Hundred Years of Federal Mining Safety and Health Research

were produced—a fatality rate of 3.91 deaths per million tons of coal. Thus the fatality rate had
been reduced by almost 50 percent between the two world wars.
After World War II, the Bureau performed some preliminary testing of air quality in mines using
diesel mine locomotives. It was concluded that “with reasonably good ventilation and approved
operating procedures and maintenance, diesel engines of suitable design may be used in mining
operations without creating hazardous or unduly objectionable conditions in the air of working
places” [DOI 1946].
In 1948, more than 30,848 mining industry employees were instructed in first aid and mine
rescue work, bringing the total receiving training in these areas to 1,705,489 since the Bureau
was established in 1910. In that year, the Bureau initiated a course for mine safety
committeemen in cooperation with the United Mine Workers Union. The course was given to
2,000 out of the 12,000 mine safety committeemen, as well as to 1,500 other miners [DOI 1948].
3.5 Significant USBM Contributions Outside of Mining
3.5.1 Explosives and Flammability Research
USBM research on explosives expanded during World War II into an extensive fundamental
research program on explosives and propellants. This work was done in cooperation with the
National Defense Research Committee. Coal dust explosions research expanded after the war
into studies of explosions of other industrial and agricultural dusts such as aluminum powders
and grain dusts.
As a result of this effort, Bureau explosives researchers discovered new methods for measuring
the explosives detonation rates and the temperature in detonation waves. Researchers also
investigated the explosibility of ammonium nitrate, which had caused the Texas City, TX,
disaster in 1947, claiming 581 lives [CRS 1976]. They discovered that this material could be
detonated by heat alone under certain conditions of confinement.
Building on its expertise in explosives research, the Bureau also studied the ignition hazards of
static electricity in hospital operating rooms where anesthetic gases were used. Researchers
identified possible hazards and recommended practices to avoid explosion problems. This
research was useful not only for understanding and preventing coal mine explosions, but was
applicable to the prevention of explosions in airplanes, submarines, and industrial plants [CRS
1976].
Over the course of several decades, significant fundamental research was undertaken by the
Bureau on the nature and characteristics of flame. Under a cooperative agreement between the
Bureau and the Safety in Mines Research Board of Great Britain, Dr. H.F. Coward of Sheffield,
England, was detailed to the Bureau’s Mines Experiment Station at Pittsburgh in April 1925.
There he worked with G.W. Jones and other Bureau researchers on conditions for the initiation
and propagation of flame in different mixtures of gases under various conditions. Their results
were compiled in several Bureau Bulletins, the last of which was published in 1952.
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