NIOSH Mining Safety and Health Research

Current research efforts under the Machine Safety research program involve developing machine design guidelines and evaluating improved hardware to reduce injuries to personnel operating and working near machinery and mobile equipment.

Developing Machine Design Guidelines and Evaluating Improved Hardware for Worker Safety

One goal of ongoing NORA Traumatic Injury research at PRL, in collaboration with DSR-Morgantown, is to develop an electromagnetic-based system (known as "HASARD" - Hazardous Area Signaling and Ranging Device) to provide warning and/or shutdown for workers operating or performing maintenance on conveyor-type equipment. The mining industry reported more than 3,300 lost-time mining injuries involving belt conveyors during 1990-97. Work activity before the incidents typically involved maintenance and repairs. Two in-house conveyors were chosen as test beds for the HASARD proximity warning system. One conveyor features fixed, rigid flights; the other is a flexible, mobile conveyor belt system. Electromagnetic noise spectra of these two conveyors were measured to determine an appropriate operating frequency range for HASARD. Results showed that most of the noise was well below 40 kHz. Efforts are underway to modify the HASARD operating frequency to 72 kHz. An automated magnetic field measurement system is also being assembled using an X-Y-Z positioning table to facilitate lab tests of the modified HASARD hardware.

In another NORA Traumatic Injury project, a multidisciplinary team of investigators from PRL, DSR, and SRL is working to hasten the development of improved internal traffic control plan guidelines and innovative safety warning devices to help protect workers on foot inside roadway work zones. During 1992-98, 841 highway and street construction workers were fatally injured. A work zone analysis system (WZAS) was designed, assembled, and tested at PRL for time and motion studies of workers around heavy mobile equipment. The WZAS consists of a two-axle trailer with various monitoring devices. These include global positioning system receivers and data loggers for tracking worker locations, a 58-ft telescoping mast with a remote-controlled pan-tilt-zoom (RC-PTZ) video camera, multichannel video recording equipment, computer, wireless satellite Internet communications, and a 18-ft-long helium blimp with a RC-PTZ video camera for aerial surveillance up to 400 ft. The WZAS was first successfully used to monitor worker movements around potentially hazardous mining equipment, such as at surface drilling sites and near surface haulage dump locations to develop interventions for improved worker safety and health at these work sites.