Safety in Coal Mining

Abstract

THIS subject is much too extensive to be even fairly adequately treated in a short paper, consequently there can be given here only a partial summation of the writer's conception of Safety in Coal Mining after somewhat over twenty-five years' experience in mining wholly within the United States. Most of the time was spent in connection with health and safety but several years were spent in both engineering and in operating work, the experience involving underground work or observations in several hundred mines in more than twentyfive states of the Union. This paper will be devoted largely to pointing out unsafe conditions with suggestions -where available-as to what may be done to increase coal mine safety. Coal mining is inherently one of the most dangerous of our major lines of occupation. Coal in finely divided form (dust) is readily inflammable and explosive, this being true of all coals except possibly the highest grades of anthracite; there is frequently encountered in all coal mines, or there is likely to be encountered at any time, gas which is very flammable and explosive; and in some instances there are found gases which are non-flammable but which quickly snuff out life by asphyxiation. The most dangerous gases given off in coal mines are invisible, tasteless and odorless, thus being peculiarly treacherous. The explosions in coal mines started by ignition of flammable gases or dusts and carried on, or propagated, usually by dusts, constitute a hazard almost exclusively confined to coal mining and the result-