[ Music ]
>> My name is Steve Mischler, and I'm the lead researcher
for the personal dust monitoring project.
The project takes place
at the Pittsburgh Mining Research Division
in Pittsburgh Laboratory.
And most of the research deals with creating
and implementing the continuous personal dust monitor,
which is currently used by the Mine Safety
and Health Administration to measure exposure concentrations
of coal mine dust for coal miners.
The continuous personal coal dust monitor was really
developed in order to give the miner a better idea
and a more appropriate time scale
of what their dust exposure is.
In the past, the way they would sample
for coal mine dust is they would put a filter on a miner
and then they would pull air
through it throughout their work day, an eight-hour work shift.
And then two weeks later,
they would deliver the results of that sample.
So the miner wouldn't know exactly what their exposure
concentration was until two weeks later.
For about 10 years ago or 15 years ago really,
we sort of thought that a way to continuously measure the dust,
the exposure of miners, would actually enable the miner
to reduce their dust exposure.
So we started working on trying to create an instrument
that would actually be able to do that.
The mining environment is very harsh, and so it was difficult
to actually create an instrument that could be feasible
within that type of environment, thus the 15-year time frame.
I think the biggest impact is really the ability currently
to give the miner their actual exposure continuously throughout
the day.
And we know from using the PDM now
that miners can actually significantly reduce their
exposure concentration just by taking a step to the right
or taking a step to the left
or taking a step backward or a step forward.
In addition, if they see that their concentrations are high
by reading it on their instrument
because there's a real time read out there,
then they can actually also maybe adjust controls that are
on the whatever equipment that they're operating just
to make sure that they're working properly.
And this is a big advancement
over the previous way they did it
because miners would have no information
to then make those adjustments.
So MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration,
they initiated a new coal dust rule a couple of years ago.
And in that coal dust rule, they actually mandated the use
of the continuous personal dust monitor.
So currently, the CPDM is used in every underground coal mine
in the United States to test
for the exposure concentrations of those miners.
And they also enabled the miners and the mining industry
to lengthen the number of samples that you take.
So in the past, a mining industry took five samples
for several different types of occupations.
Currently, we have to take 15 of those samples
for those occupations.
So in essence, we end up sampling for 30
or 45 days every quarter, where in the past we probably ended
up sampling for 15 days within the quarter.
So it really has enabled the mining industry to get a much,
much better view of what the actual exposure concentrations
to miners have been.
The main goal of this research project was
to give underground coal miners an instrument
that they could use to continuously measure the amount
of coal mine dust they are being exposed to.
Through this research, and through the use
of using this instrument, we've seen the exceedance rate,
or the number of miners
that actually are exceeding the regulatory level,
has dropped by over 90% over the last year
that this has been implemented.
So we feel through that data
that this instrument is really enabling the miners
to reduce their underground coal dust exposure.