continue employing physicians who had allowed relatives to die, would have been resolved had she systematically applied her initial insight. The issue was not, as she says elsewhere, about appropriate medical knowledge or setting standards of care, but about the care of the soul in its physical setting, a job which might be done as well by an educated priest with a smattering of medical knowled...

With interest, I read the recent analysis by Tomaskova and co-workers (2017) about mortality from coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP). The research question remains unclear whether coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP) resulting from exposure to respirable coal dust containing crystalline silica accelerates the development of lung cancer or whether it is an intermediate stage in the pathway. I made...

AIMS To investigate the early pattern of longitudinal change in forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) among new Chinese coal miners, and the relation between coal mine dust exposure and the decline of lung function. METHODS The early pattern of lung function changes in 317 newly hired Chinese underground coal miners was compared to 132 referents. This three year prospective cohort study...

Ignition behavior of bituminous coal dust deposited between two hot surfaces forming wedges of 60º, and 90º is experimentally studied. Three thermocouples placed along the symmetry plane of the wedge cross-section at various heights from the apex (lowermost, middle and top) are used to record the transient temperature data. Results show that the ignition always occurs around the region surround...

Employees of coal-fired power stations and people living nearby as well as those involved in the shipment and processing of coal fly ash can be exposed to coal fly ash (pulverised fuel ash or “PFA”). An extensive research program was carried out in order to map such exposure and its effects. Particle size distribution, chemical composition, quartz, radioactivity, emission factors and fugitive d...

The development of a sampling instrument for the assessment of an underground coal miner’s exposure to airborne respirable coal mine dust on a continuous and real-time basis has been long identified as essential for timely initiation of control actions. A respirable dust dosimeter (RDD) which operates on the principle of increasing pressure across a filter media with increasing dust mass on the...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the alterations of biomarkers in the development and progression of coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP). METHODS The type and number of cells, and the levels of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), pulmonary surfactant protein, phospholipids and fibronectin in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid were assayed in 14 health active coal miners, 21 coal miners without CWP and 13 ...

Generally, an effective ventilation system is essential to reduce coal dust disaster. However, with the implementation of carbon tax and increase of energy and operating costs, it is urgent to design a cost-effective ventilation and dust control system. In this paper, a real driving face in an excavation laneway of coal mine in China was taken as the physical model, and the temporospatial chara...

The underground workers in the Dutch coal-mines have been radiographed (70 mm.) seven times since 1949. The prevalence of coal-miners' pneumoconiosis shows a continuous decrease in all age groups. To evaluate the effect of the intensive system of dust suppression over this period a cohort analysis was made of the proportion ofmen with pneumoconiosis with the same number of years of exposure und...

This study was to investigate whether working in conditions of elevated concentrations of mine gases (CO2, CO, CH4, DMS) and dust may result in oxidative stress. Coal miners (n=94) from the Velenje Coal mine who were arranged into control group and three groups according to a number of consecutive working days. 8-isoprostane as a biological marker of oxidative stress was measured in exhaled bre...