The fibrogenic behaviour of quartz is caused by reactions of the quartz surface with the biological environment. It can be inhibited by surface impurities and surface layers of non-quartz matter. A thermoluminescence method has been developed for the determination of the amount of free, biologically active quartz surfaces in coal-mine dust. For airborne dust samples from collieries of the Ruhr coal field it provided results which agree well with the toxicities measured by animal experiments. It turned out that quartz surfaces in dust samples from lower-rank coal seams are more contaminated.
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