Duration of the project:
01.07.2017 - 30.06.2020
Contact person:
dr inż. Andrzej Walentek
e-mail: awalentek@gig.eu
tel. 32 259 24 29
The application for co-financing of the research project with the acronym ROCD has been submitted to the contest of the Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) in September 2016. The project received high marks and co-financing from the European Commission - Grant Agreement No. 754205.
The aim of the project is to develop integrated tools to evaluate the risks associated with the impact of coal dust on employees (including methods for forecasting the concentration and parameters of coal dust), as well as continuous monitoring of its parameters.
The risk associated with the impact of coal dust on the health of miners is a very significant problem. In Poland, the impact of dust over the last 10 years was the cause of 4.500 cases of pneumoconiosis of coal miners (Kalukiewicz, Rojek, 2011). In the US, pneumoconiosis is considered to be the cause of 69.377 deaths in the period from 1970 to 2004 and it was diagnosed in almost 8% of miners, with a work experience longer than 25 years (Colinet et al., 2010).
Currently, the determination of risk associated with the impact of coal dust is based on national or regional epidemiological analyses.
Nevertheless, the toxicity of dust can vary significantly between individual mining plants, and currently there are no procedures for its determination for specific mining operations.
In addition, recent studies indicate that the occurrence of PM2.5 dust fraction can have an impact on the occurrence of cardiovascular disease (MAK, 2012; Cesaroni et al., 2014). Therefore, it seems possible that some miners have occupational diseases that have not been associated with coal dust. Moreover, there are no studies on currently used dust removal devices or respiratory protection in the context of their effectiveness in limiting the hazard from PM2.5 dust fraction.
Project results will include the development of prediction methods, test procedures and devices to reduce dust hazard and, as a consequence, disease rates among mine employees.
