Evaluation of noise exposures of miners operating highwall mining equipment

摘要

Modern highwall mining systems have replaced surface coal augers in some highwallrnmining operations because of their ability to increase coal production and higher recoveryrnrates. Another possible benefit of using highwall mining systems instead of surface coalrnaugers is the reduction of noise exposures to the affected miners extracting the coal fromrnthe highwall. Several surface coal augers and highwall mining operations were evaluatedrnfor full shift noise exposures of the machine operator and helpers during this investigation.rnEngineering noise controls were also evaluated for each piece of highwall miningrnequipment. The operator and helper working on the highwall mining system were exposedrnto average sound pressure levels of 61.5 dBA and 89.0 dBA, respectively, while the operatorrnand helper working on the surface coal auger were exposed to higher average soundrnpressure levels of 95.4 dBA and 94.0 dBA, respectively.