AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract View
Assessing Occupational Exposure to Silica and Soot in Diamond Mines using Wearable Sensors and Samplers
ALBERTO BALDELLI, Steven Rogak, Winnie Chu, University of British Columbia
Abstract Number: 243 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract Mining dusts can be a health hazard. Mining industries are interested in recording the silica presence. Diesel soot is found in mining environments and should be measured as a health hazard in its own right and as a potentially interfering constituent of samples collected for silica analysis. Realtime measurement of personal silica exposures is not currently possible; we aim to develop a method combining real-time and offline sample analysis, providing better estimates of exposure for miners than previously possible.
Nanozen Industries have developed a portable air pollution sensor, consisting of a microchannel system with an integrated particle detector. This sensor has been calibrated for PM4 Arizona road dust. The measurable particulate size has been selected due to limits imposed by the regulations, which concern the range of 0.3 to 10 µm. Samples from a diamond mine have been collected for 8-10 hours sampling time, at different times in a working day, according to miner activities, such as transporting the mine dust and drilling, and related to environmental conditions, such as wind speed or low humidity. The influence of several factors to the amount of silica and soot in mining dust is investigated; the realtime data provides information that could be used to minimize exposure.
Measurements of mass and chemical composition of mining dusts collected with a real-time optical sensor have been correlated with off-line techniques, like gravimetric analysis, Raman Spectroscopy, Fourier Transformation Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Experimental steps consist of estimation of the quantity of soot relative to silica, development of a calibration curve for the detection of the silica amount, and analysis and comparison of the data obtained with the mentioned techniques.