Proper lighting plays a critical role in enabling miners to detect hazards when operating a roof bolter, one of the most dangerous mining machines to operate; however, there has not been any lighting research to address the walk-thru type of roof bolter commonly used today. To address this, the Saturn light was designed to directly address walk-thru roof bolter safety by improving trip hazard illumination. The visual performances of 30 participants that comprised three age groups were quantified by measuring each participant's visual performance in detecting trip objects positioned on the two floor locations within the machine's interior working space. The lighting conditions were the existing compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and the Saturn LED area light developed by NIOSH researchers. Three intensities of the Saturn lights were used, 100%, 75%, and 50%, all of which resulted in better visual performance, and up to a 48% reduction in average trip detection time compared to the CFL. For the Saturn trip object miss rates were <0.5% for all age groups in contrast to the CFL, which ranged between 32.5% for the youngest group and 50.4% for the oldest group.
Roof bolting typically follows the extraction of a commodity to help keep the roof from collapsing. During 2004 to 2013, roof bolter operators had the highest number of machinery-related injuries, accounting for 64.7 percent, at underground coal mines. This paper analyzes U.S. roof bolter fatal and nonfatal lost-time injury data at underground work locations for all commodities from 2004 through 2013 and determines risk indices for six roof bolting tasks. For fatal and nonfatal incidences combined, the roof bolting tasks in order of the highest to lowest risk index were bolting, handling of materials, setting the temporary roof support (TRS), drilling, tramming, and traversing. For fatalities, the roof bolting tasks in order of the highest to lowest risk index were handling of materials, setting the TRS, bolting, drilling, traversing, and tramming. Age was found to be a significant factor. Severity of injury, indicated by days lost, was found to increase with increasing age as well as with increasing experience, largely due to the confounding of age and experience. The operation of the roof bolting machine used in underground mining should be a research priority given the high frequency and severity of incidents. The results also suggest that temporal factors may exist, so additional research is warranted to better understand these factors and potentially develop interventions. This research provides a data-driven foundation from which future research can be conducted for safety interventions to reduce the frequency and severity of incidences involving the roof bolter activities of bolting, handling of materials, and setting the TRS.
It is critical for the safety of miners to be able to escape, unaided, during a mine emergency. Self-escape is challenging in the presence of smoke that can occur during a mine emergency. To assist self-escape, coloured markers in underground mines designate the primary/secondary escapeways, but no universal colour code exists. Ten participants were tested to recognize the colour and designation (primary/secondary) of fluorescent yellow–green (FYG), yellow (Y), white (W) and green (G) escapeway markers in both a clear and smoked-filled environment. The overall misidentification rate for all colours was 1.9% and 18.1%, respectively, in clear and smoke conditions. FYG had the highest misidentification percentage for both conditions. For the marker designation tests, participants were most accurate in clear conditions (100.0%) for the FYG + W, Y + G, G + W and W + FYG combinations, and least accurate (89.6%) for the Y + FYG combination, while for smoke conditions participants were most accurate for the G + Y combination (95.8%). The overall effect of colour combination was significant, indicating that the colour combination for primary/secondary recognition is a significant factor where the G + Y combination was best. It can be inferred from these data that the colour combination is an important factor in participants’ ability to recognize primary/secondary escapeway markers in smoke conditions.
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