One Hundred Years of Federal Mining Safety and Health Research

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Figure 39. Miner wearing personal dust monitor (PDM). In March 2003, MSHA published proposed changes to its dust sampling program. In these new regulations, MSHA allowed for the use of the continuous PDM. However, industry and labor indicated in public meetings that MSHA should delay rulemaking until the PDM could be further evaluated as a compliance-grade instrument. Both industry and labor representatives envision the PDM as having the potential to become the cornerstone for a new sampling process. Thus, a change in regulations has been proposed by MSHA and NIOSH to allow the certification of the PDM or any future similar dust monitor for use in determination of compliance with coal mine dust standards. The PDM received an R&D 100 award as one of the nation’s top 100 technical developments of the year in 2004. A PDM Coal Partnership has been established with members from industry, labor, and NIOSH to promote the PDM and to exchange information on the technology. In September 2008, the PDM received approval from MSHA for use in underground coal mines. Thermo-Fischer Scientific is now manufacturing the PDM and it is commercially available. In addition to its use as a dust monitor, the PDM sampler has been modified to be used as a realtime diesel particulate monitor. The PDM unit is fitted with a particle size separator so that oversize material does not enter the unit and only diesel particulate matter is measured. Substantial testing of the modified PDM has been conducted in Australia, with promising results. 6.2.4 Improved Regulations for Dust Control Associated with Highwall Drilling at Surface Coal Mines A series of NIOSH investigations documenting a very high risk of silicosis among rock drillers at surface coal mines was initially motivated by a fatal case of acute silicosis diagnosed in 1979. That miner, whose only silica exposure was 5 years as a highwall driller at a surface coal mine operation, died in his mid-30s as a direct result of his occupational exposure. Therefore, NIOSH 65
esearchers reanalyzed data from the earlier ALFORD survey of surface coal mines from the early 1970s, looking specifically at drill crew members and excluding those with prior underground experience. Pneumoconiosis prevalence among drill crew members was found to increase from 1.6 percent for those with less than ten years of drilling tenure to 15 percent for those with 20 or more years’ experience. The NIOSH researchers concluded that “The belief that only coalminers who work underground have an appreciable risk of developing pneumoconiosis needs to be modified” [Banks et al. 1983]. In the mid-1980s, NIOSH carried out a new survey of the respiratory health status of surface coal miners [Amandus et al. 1989]. The survey found that pneumoconiosis was more prevalent among drillers (16 percent) than among others who had no drilling experience ( 80 percent) than among surface miners in other jobs. As part of this same effort, NIOSH later analyzed MSHA data from 1982-86 [Piacitelli et al. 1990], finding that over 75 percent of the quartz samples for drillers exceeded the respirable silica PEL. In a listing of the ten jobs with the highest average respirable quartz exposures, the first three jobs were “highwall drill helper,” “highwall drill operator,” and “rockdriller,” and the average concentration for these three together was double that of the next highest job on the list (“bulldozer operator”). NIOSH increased its efforts on this issue, developing engineering controls and other recommendations to reduce occupational silica exposures, e.g., improvements to dust collector on drills used by highwall drill operators, and cab-enclosure filtration systems. NIOSH had earlier produced an Alert warning employers and employees of the severe risk of improper operation of drilling equipment [NIOSH 1992]. With a collaborative NIOSH-MSHA-OSHA “Silica: It’s not just dust!” prevention program in the 1990s, MSHA undertook enhanced efforts to reduce occupational exposures to silica and eliminate the incidence of silicosis, carrying out special industry-wide inspection “sweeps” of surface mines and establishing improved regulations for more effective enforcement of dust control on drilling rigs at surface mines. These new regulations required effective drill dust control regardless of dust exposure level [30 CFR § 72.620]. 6.2.5 Diesel Particulate Regulations Underground miners have routinely been exposed to very high concentrations of diesel particulate matter (DPM), much higher than any other occupation. In 1998, MSHA proposed two diesel rules—one for coal mining, the other for metal/nonmetal mining. The coal rule set a staged implementation limit on DPM emission ending at 2.5 g/hr for heavy-duty equipment, and this rule could be met by the use of MSHA-approved filters in the exhaust system. The metal 66
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Department of Health and Human Serv
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This document is in the public doma
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4.3.7 Spokane Mining Research Labor
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Figure 26. Joy loading machine in 1
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2p REL SCSR SMCRA SRL STOP TC U.S.
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The origins of the USBM were in the
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Figure 3. Headline from the 1907 Mo
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Figure 6. Plaque commemorating the
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Figure 8. Official seal of the Unit
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Most of this initial research was s
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Seven hundred twenty miners were gi
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One Hundred Years of Federal Mining Safety and Health Research

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