Respiratory Health Hazards in Mining Activities
Discuss about the Eldorado Vernacular for Buildings of Barkerville.
The most dangerous activity that was undertaken during the file trip was operating the drilling operators which are used in the drilling of the rocks
Operation of the drilling machines used in breaking through rocks generates large volumes of dust which is mainly composed of crystalline silica. The particles of the dust were reparable and thus exposure to such dust bore important risk factors as far as respiratory diseases is concerned. The repairable dust may have both short term and long term implications on the human health in which the short term implications included irritation in the upper part of the respiratory tract. The long term implication may include such conditions as silico-tuberculosis occupational; pneumonia, pulmonary tuberculosis as well as silicosis Iredale, J., 2015.
The hazards associated with mining activities on the site may be controlled using the hierarchy of hazard control that outlines the systematic way of minimizing or otherwise eliminating the exposure to the identified hazard. The hierarchy includes elevation, substitution, engineering control, administrative control and finally personal protective equipment. Elimination involves complete removal of the hazard and tends to be the most effective way of controlling hazards in the case of the dusts mainly composed of crystalline silica that was generated at the field; this strategy can be achieved through sprinkling of water on the rocks and the ground surfaces that are to be drilled MacArthur, N.A., 2014. Through this, the dust will be contained with the rocks and most of them will not escape into the atmospheric air. In so doing, the generated hazard will remain at the point at which it has been generated and thus the impacts of its harmful effects controlled.
Substitution involves replacing the substance that generates the hazard with another that does not produce the hazard in question. This has been treated as the second most effective and efficient approach in controlling hazards. In this context, it is the drilling machines that are responsible for the generation of the dust. Replacing the drilling equipment with those that produce less of the dust would work toward attaining this approach. In other case, the drilling may be done using such substances that produce dust once in a single drilling or extraction session hence eliminating the gradual and continuous production. This may be achieved by the use of say an explosive that would explode the rocks in a single go.
Hierarchy of Hazard Control
Engineering control comes third in the hierarchy and in this control mechanism the hazard is not removed but instead the people are slated from the hazards. Engineering controls often tend to be capital intensive even though they may aid in the reduction of future costs. In this context, an enclosure and isolation may be created so as to offer a physical barrier between the hazards and the people. An example could be the use of remotely controlled equipment. Still, fume hoods may be used in the mining filed to eliminate the dust as an element of engineered control.
Administrative controls involve making changes in the way of working by the people and may be inclusive of changes in the procedures, installation of earning labels and signage, training of the employees. The administrative controls as well don not remove the hazards but instead limit or otherwise prevent exposure of the people to the hazard. In this task, the drilling can be done at night when they are fewer people moving around. This would ensure that number of people exposed to the risk is greatly minimized. The use of personal protective equipment such as gloves, overalls, safety footwear, helmets, safety glass, reflector jackets and respirators form the last approach to hazard control. The use of such equipment as safety glass ware and respirators are approved for this field trip to check on the penetration of the dust into the various parts of the body.
Gold is dispersed widely on the earth’s crust even though it often exists in concentrations that are highly enough to make it worth mining. In some regions, the heated subterranean fluids have managed to dissolve the gold and then redeposited it in a form that is more concentrated and solid. Such deposits are known as primary gold deposits. The most primary gold in Victoria is found in reefs or quartz veins where they are deposited in the cracks that were opened up during the process of faulting and folding of the beds of mudstone and Paleozoic sandstone that occurred about 440 to 360 million years back.
With time, some of the primary gold deposits have since been exposed to the surface of the earth. They have undergone wear caused by the eons of weather and redeposited the gold in the creek beds and in the soils in the firm of secondary gild deposits also called alluvial gold deposits. This is the process through which gold nuggets are formed. To the tune of about 2.5 million kilograms of gild has been mined from Victoria since mining began in the area Yannopoulos, J.C., 2012. This quantity represents almost half of the reefs and the quantity remaining from the alluvial deposits.
Gold Mining in Victoria
This was the most widely spread method of extraction. Quartz reef acted as the primary gold source in most of the goldfields. Steep dipping was done and mining was done in sections that left behind large slots in the ground on the positions where reef has been extracted. The reefs were quarried to harvest the yields of exposures of the rich surfaces after which shafts were sunk otherwise tunnels driven into the hill sides in order to reach to the gold that is hidden at greater heights. Th quartz was being crushed to fine sand in order to remove the gold Shea, P.M., 2012.
This involved sinking of a main shaft in places where it was possible in solid ground and then tunnels are extended from the shaft to beneath the old buried riverbeds that were known as leads. There were vertical connections that were done at intervals to the leads and excavation of the ancient gravels that bore gold was carried on from the side of a major connecting tunnel that went through the lead.
This process involved using running water breath the earth that bears gold and there was a sluice box that was used in recovering the gold. The box was in the form of a simple, long and open-ended box with transverse riffles or cleats that were tacked onto its base using coarse matting that was placed between the riffles De Lacerda, L.D. and Salomons, W., 2012. The heavier gold could tick on the matting or behind the riffles upon washing earth and gravel through the box.
Alluvial gold was mainly found on in the clay soil, between the layers of thin rocks or in clay-laden gravel during gold rush days. At the time gold was mined through digging up using a shovel since they were at very shallow depth. Another predominant method at the time was tin dishing or panning. The method involved careful sifting and re-sifting of the dirt using water to uncover what was the worthwhile of the pieces of gold.
Deep lean mining incorporated extracting gold through digging from the riverbeds that were the surface. The number of miners was ranging from a small group of friends to big cooperative. At some points it was only the companies that were resourceful enough to make follow ups to the deep leads Lawrence, S. and Davies, P., 2015. Reef mining went on for a long time which involved the digging up of deep shafts in order to get to the veins of the quartz that bear gold. This called for the need of steam engines that were used in the pumping of the water out of the deep underground as well as running the quartz stamp batteries. The quartz is the crushed to powder and various chemicals including arsenic and mercury are used in the extraction of the gold dust Shea, P.M., 2012. The residue is which are crushed stones were then to be dumped over the surface of the ground or tipped in between the creeks.
Machine operators are used in hammering away on the rock in search for gold with several trucks moving within the active tunnels. The operators are used in drilling into the rocks in a pattern of a grid before the remaining rocks which is about three meters is blow away with the use of explosives. Once extracted from the rocks through explosion, the gold and the ore are separated at the processing facility of the site.
References
De Lacerda, L.D. and Salomons, W., 2012. Mercury from gold and silver mining: a chemical time bomb?. Springer Science & Business Media
Lawrence, S. and Davies, P., 2015. Cornish tin-streamers and the Australian gold rush: Technology transfer in alluvial mining. Post-Medieval Archaeology, 49(1), pp.99-113
Yannopoulos, J.C., 2012. The extractive metallurgy of gold. Springer Science & Business Media
Oppy, G. and Trakakis, N.N., 2017. A companion to philosophy in Australia and New Zealand. Monash University Publishing
Oppy, G. and Trakakis, N.N., 2017. A companion to philosophy in Australia and New Zealand. Monash University Publishing
Shea, P.M., 2012. Champagne From Six to Six: A Brief Social History of Entertainments and Recreations at Beechworth and the Ovens Goldfields, Victoria Australia 1852-1877. Strategic Book Publishing
Iredale, J., 2015. Eldorado Vernacular: The Buildings of Barkerville. BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, (185), pp.27-47.
Iredale, J., 2015. ELDORADO VERNACULAR: Barkerville and Its Buildings. BC Studies, (185), p.27
Dunk, M., Overseas Chinese Ceramics in Nineteenth Century Australia: the Dennis O’Hoy Collection.
MacArthur, N.A., 2014. Gold Rush and Gold Mining: A Technological Analysis Of Gabriel’s Gully and the Blue Spur, 1861-1891 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Otago).
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