Mortality from respiratory diseases in dusty trades (inorganic dusts) / by Frederick L. Hoffman.

  • Hoffman, Frederick L. (Frederick Ludwig), 1865-1946.
Date:
[1918]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mortality from respiratory diseases in dusty trades (inorganic dusts) / by Frederick L. Hoffman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    at the present time.^ During the intervening 200 years the mining industry has attained to truly enormous and world-wide importance, with a constantly increasing number of employees, either directly engaged- in mineral production or in the subsequent conversion of metallic and nonmetallic substances. The progress which has been made in the scientific understanding of mining hazards to health and life is best emphasized in the most modern treatise on “ Gas Poisoning in Mining and Other Industries,” by John Blaister, M. D., and David Dale Logan, M. D.^ and the elaborate joint report of the Miners^ Phthisis Prevention Committee of the Union of South Africa. It would be quite impracticable for the present purpose to discuss with the required brevity and sufficient thoroughness even the more im¬ portant branches of the mining industry in their relation to health and mortality. The subject divides itself primarily into the mining of metallic and nonmetallic products, and is further subdivided according to essential variations in underground conditions, the me¬ chanical and chemical properties of dust and gas exposure, methods of mining, and the use of safety precautions, chiefly in the direction of effective dust laying and the required use of respirators, particu¬ larly in dusty stopes. The predominating accident hazard, involv¬ ing a considerable loss of life at the younger ages, materially impairs general conclusions regarding disease liability, since the effect of health-injurious conditions is obviously obscured by prem.ature death in conseiiuence of mine explosions, falls of roof, etc. During the year 1915 the fatality rate in American coal mines was 4.44 per thousand 300-day workers and in metal mines 3.89. Since the average age at death of mine employees in this country is approximately 32 years, the effect of such a fatality rate is to disturb seriously the propor¬ tionate mortality distribution from pulmonary tuberculosis and re¬ lated diseases. The true menace of the dust hazard in mining opera¬ tions subject to a considerable and continuous degree of dust inhala¬ tion is measurable only to an approximate degree, on account of the coincident and often more important mechanical accident hazard, which even far-reaching safety measures and precautions have not as yet reduced to relatively unimportant numerical proportion. The specific dust hazard in mining is much more serious in metal mining than in coal mining in that in the former the nature of the rock or gangue inclosing or containing the ore bodies is of decidedly greater hygienic importance than the metal dust when extracted by ordinary mining methods, or subsequently by processes of ore reduction, smelting, cyaniding, chlorination, etc. The hygiene of metal mining 1 See “ Friedrich Hoffmann liber das Kohlenoxydgas,” by Dr. Albert Neuburger ; Leip¬ zig 1912. Also of interest and value in this connection is the treatise, in Geiman, by Dr.’ Theodore Foleck, Berlin, 1867, entitled, “ Die chemische Natur der Minengase und ihre Beziehung zur Minenkrankheit,”