Coal miners in southwest Virginia, and elsewhere in central Appalachia, have the country’s highest rates of advanced black lung disease, and federal regulators are considering tighter rules to help protect them. Scientists in Virginia are also working to develop better measuring tools, to help miners see what’s in the air they’re breathing.
Inside a quiet laboratory on Virginia Tech’s campus, graduate student Garek Elie placed coal dust into a portable infrared machine.
“It’s a very easy process, it’s a very quick process,” Elie said.
From one day to the next, a miner may have different levels of silica exposure, depending on how much rock they’re cutting through. Currently, dust samples from mines are sent intermittently to government labs through the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and it often takes weeks to get results back.
“The problem is, we still don’t have real time technology to know how much silica is in that dust,” said Emily Sarver, who heads up the research lab at Virginia Tech where they analyze coal dust from all over the world, some of which actually contains rare earth minerals, which could be used for electric vehicle batteries.
They’re also testing technology, like this infrared machine, to study which devices are the most accurate. Eventually, machines like this could give miners results at the end of each shift.
Sarver said ultimately, she would like to see technology that allows miners to see in real time, how much silica they’re breathing in, so they could stop if they reach an unsafe level.
“I don’t want to forget that’s a real person. And we have to do better, we have to do more,” Sarver said.
Their research also includes developing a tool that could attach to phones to analyze dust on mine sites.
