Electronic Structure and Biological Activity of Native Coals

Disabilities of coal miners due to black-lung decease morbidities are rather high (up to 10 men per 1 million tons of mined coal). Besides that, dangerous to health biological activity is also proper to various carbon nanoparticles. The analysis of relationships between coal miner morbidities, biological activities of coals and bibliographical data has shown that: activity of coals is mainly determined by their organic matter but not their silica admixtures in mineral matter of coals; among the different types of coals, an increased activity is proper to anthracites and among the different petrographical components of coals an increased activity is proper to fusainite; activity of oxidized coals is considerably lower than that of non-oxidized ones; action of ozone and coal and silica particles on fagocytes is essentially similar; oxygen can be reduced on both coal and silica surfaces to biologically dangerous ion-radical species, followed by generation (in the presence of water) of highly active OHradicals; effect of coal particles on lungs is related to violation of coal particles removal from lungs as a result of transportation cells (fagocytes) destruction and coal accumulation in the interalveolar lung spaces. Characteristics of electron interactable with oxygen can be estimated from ESR spectra of unpaired electrons (UE) in non-oxidized coal placed under methane atmosphere. The parameter of coal ability to reduce oxygen is proportional to the concentration of UEs interactable with O2 and is reciprocally proportional to the ESR line width of non-oxidized -native coal UEs before air exposition. The parameter of biological activity (coal ability to violate biological membranes), KΦ, is proportional to logarithm of the parameter of coal electron-donor ability. The parameter KΦ was estimated for coal samplesFig.2 (of various coal ranks ranging from jet coal to anthracite) selected from 44 coal beds in the 11 coal mines of Kuzbass (Russia). The KΦ values obtained were compared with morbidity parameters (relative amounts of disabled coal miners per 1 million of mined coal). It has been established that the incidence of disease, P, is linearly (with correlation coefficient of 0.95) related to KΦ values determining the ability of coal dust to reduce oxygen and to accelerate the destructive oxidation of biological membrane lipids. At the same time, the numerical KΦ and P values are equal. Thus, the mechanism of an initiating role of coal electrons interactable with oxygen to form biologically active pathogenic species has been established. A method for estimation of coal fibrinogen activity, comprising the determination of the amounts and mobilities of unpaired electrons (from the ESR measurements) reducing oxygen into biopathogenic species has been developed. A considerable increase in biopathogenic activity for non-oxidized coal dust particles compared to that of oxidized coal has been discovered. A complex of methods for the selection, pretreatment and studying of native coals, permitting one to investigate their biopathogenic properties.