Emerging technologies control respirable dust exposures for continuous mining and roof bolting personnel

Particle size and mineralogy distributions in respirable dust samples from 25 US underground coal mines

“…Dust control and monitoring efforts have long been targeted toward the production face and roof bolting activities where the mass concentration of respirable dust is relatively high (Goodman and Organiscak, 2002;Goodman et al 2006;Colinet et al, 2010;National Academies, 2018). The results presented here reinforce those priorities, since dust in these (and downwind) areas also tends to have high abundance of rock-strata sourced particles including silica, which is generally considered the most hazardous constituent in respirable coal mine dust (Colinet et al, 2010;Reynolds et al 2018).…”

Best practices for dust control in coal mining, second edition.

“…As shown in Figure 4.11 and reported in other NIOSH research [Goodman et al 2006;NIOSH 2013;Organiscak et al 2016], working downwind of the CM can result in exposure to elevated respirable dust levels, particularly if the CM is not operating a flooded-bed scrubber.…”

Best practices for dust control in coal mining.

“…However, wet-head technology has not yet consistently demon strated dust reduction benefits in reported studies. These studies have shown variation in dust reductions under its current configuration [Strebig 1975;Goodman et al 2006]. One benefit that has been reported by mining machine operators is increased visibility at the cutter head when the wet head is used.…”