A matched case-control study was conducted to investigate the risk of gastric cancer in coalminers in the southern part of Limburg, The Netherlands. All 683 male cases of gastric cancer were identified at the five pathology departments in the area, all histologically confirmed by a pathologist. For each case a control patient, free of gastric cancer, was selected from the same pathology departm...

This paper addresses the question of whether adopting safety culture improves hazard prevention in enterprises characterized by high primary risk. To answer this question, sample underground coal mines were examined to investigate the basic elements of the safety culture of employees. This paper presents the results of a diagnosis of the basic elements of the safety culture of supervisors (midl...

It is necessary to obtain a fundamental understanding of the goaf gas flow patterns in longwall mine in order to develop optimum goaf gas drainage and spontaneous combustion (sponcom) management strategies. The best ventilation layout for a longwall underground mine should assist in goaf gas drainage and further reduce the risk of sponcom in the goaf. Further, in the longwall panel, regulators ...

The objective of the Diesel Emissions Evaluation Program (DEEP)-sponsored project at Inco’s Stobie mine was to conduct a long term field evaluation of diesel particulate filter (DPF) systems available to the underground mining industry. Some of the major issues studied were criteria for selecting the filter media, means of DPF regeneration, efficiency of DPF systems and the occurrence of unwant...

We present a methodology for long-term mine planning based on a general capacitated multicommodity network flow formulation. It considers underground and open-pit ore deposits sharing multiple downstream processing plants over a long horizon. The purpose of the model is to optimize several mines in an integrated fashion, but real size instances are hard to solve due to the combinatorial nature ...

According to Dean1, the largest component of an underground mine’s operating expenses is the labour cost, typically from 40% to 50% with some as high as 60% of the total cost. Industrial managers know that the total cost will go down if they can accomplish the job with fewer people. Moreover, enhancing the productivity per man-hour is one of the greatest savings in manpower and that can be a po...

Underground U.S. coal miners were studied cross-sectionally for the association of respirable coal mine dust exposure with pulmonary function and symptoms of airways obstruction. The study group included 1,185 miners participating in Round 4 of the National Study of Coal Workers' Pneumoconiosis who had started mining in or after 1970 when comprehensive exposure regulations first came into effec...

A mine shaft is the lifeline to underground mines. Mine operators depend on safe, uninterrupted, and efficient movement of workers and materials. The shaft and hoisting system provides access to the network of openings used to recover the underground resource, provides vertical transport of miners and materials, and serves as an escapeway in case of an emergency. Accidents involving hoisting ca...