The first six holes drilled by Africa-focused project developer Ivanhoe Mines confirm an expanded, thick, flat-lying, bottom-loaded zone of high-grade copper mineralisation at the southern part of the Kakula discovery of the Kamoa copper project, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.
Single Bucket DustWatch unit
MicroScans on Fallout dust filters.
A detailed MicroScan for the units placed on farms or other areas can be done so that the information can be displayed in a bar graph. The graph certainly makes for presenting in an interesting way and helps with discussions. The main aim of the monitoring program is to create awareness and maintain awareness with regard to dust generating activities, and this graph should help, if your results get close to the limit. See below for a Generic example.
(Dustfall MicroScans, precipitant dust MicroScans)
Sincerely
Chris Loans
DustWatch CC – Precipitant Dust Monitoring
082 875 0209 or 021 789 0847 (Chris)
083 308 4764 (Gerry)
0866 181 421 (Fax)
Training available for dustfall reporting
Truck drivers around the world are monitored and even woken up remotely in Caterpillar’s Peoria headquarters.
Caterpillar’s sleep fatigue center uses face recognition software to observe drivers who may start to nod off or become distracted. Clips of the drivers who are either distracted or groggy arrive from locations ranging from northern Alberta to Western Australia, over 17,000 KM away.
MINING.com discussed the sleep management system with Mike Hatfield, who looks after business development at Caterpillar. MINING.com toured the facility in the fall of 2015.
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Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to mining and industry.
London-listed Petra Diamonds (LON:PDL), already known for its major findings of recent months, has just unearthed a 121.26-carat white rock from its Cullinan mine in South Africa.
The gem is a Type II diamond “of exceptional colour and clarity”, the company said, and is “an outstanding example of the large, high quality diamonds for which the mine is known.”
This information was originally found at www.mining.com
Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.
Hi everyone! I trust you are having a great week! Here are a few articles I found on air pollution and respiratory issues.
The Porterville Recorder says this:
At-risk residents urged to stay indoors
Smoke flowing into the Porterville area from numerous fires around the state is not just fouling our air, it is causing serious health concerns, a local pulmonologist said.
Dr. Harprett Sandhu said he has seen an increase in patients and has seen more complications for existing patients at his practice in Porterville.
“Not only in the past few days. I have seen an increasing tend the past few weeks,” he said Thursday.
The Cedar Fire about 30 miles southeast of Porterville is pouring smoke into the Valley and that is being mixed with smoke from the Bluecut Fire north of San Bernardino, the Chimney Fire in San Luis Obispo County and the Soberanes Fire on the California coast near Big Sur.
By mid-afternoon Thursday, the smoke was so heavy in Porterville it was like a cloudy day. By late afternoon, an orange hue was created over the city.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District issued a health cautionary statement early Thursday. It noted the smoke is creating unusually high particulate matter and ozone levels throughout the Valley.
Cassandra Melching with the air district, said Porterville and Springville are two of the worst areas of the Valley, but other areas area also being impacted.
“It’s just not good,” she said, warning residents to stay indoors as much as possible.
“If you smell smoke and you see it, it’s definitely affecting you,” she added.
Dr. Sandhu said the fires only exacerbate already bad air in the Valley. He said he has seen an increase in patients over the past eight weeks.
For those with respiratory problems, the smoke causes immediate problems. Kelly Kestner with Pacific Pulmonary Service, a medical supply company, said they have had an increase in calls for people needing oxygen or filters for their breathing apparatuses.
“Any time you have an extended period of breathing in contaminants, it can have a negative affect,” she said.
Even those healthy patients are being affected. Melching said a tightness in the chest, difficultly breathing, dizzy, light-headedness and a scratchy throat are all signs someone is being affected by the smoke.
Dr. Sandhu said for the healthy patient, “because of stuff in the air, it can be a concern.” He said people should be aware of the symptoms.
He said the smoke is adding to the number of hospital stays and visits to the emergency room, but like the air board, he advises people to stay indoors as much as possible.
The Cedar Fire, which spread rapidly Thursday, was less than 10 percent contained, and the Bluecut fire was also less than 10 percent contained. Fire officials expect both fires to continue to burn for several more days, if not weeks.
“The businesses and residents of the Valley have done so much to reduce summertime pollution that it is unfortunate when these wildfires overwhelm that great work,” stated Seyed Sadredin, the District’s executive director/Air Pollution Control officer.
Smoke from wildfires produces particulate matter (PM) and contributes to the creation of ozone, which can cause serious health problems including lung disease, asthma attacks and increased risk of heart attacks and stroke. People with existing respiratory conditions, young children and elderly people are especially susceptible to health effects from these pollutants. Air District officials urge residents to follow their doctors’ orders when exposed to wildfire emissions and stay indoors if at all possible.
The District’s Real-time Air Advisory Network (RAAN) monitors are designed to detect the fine particulates (called PM 2.5 which are microscopic in size and not visible to the human eye) that exist in wildfire smoke. Residents can check the District’s wildfire page at www.valleyair.org/wildfires for information about any current wildfires and whether they are impacting the Valley. Residents can also check the nearest air monitor to their location to determine localized air-quality conditions. Visit the Real-time Air Advisory Network to subscribe for free:www.valleyair.org/RAAN.
Air pollution caused by war may be a major factor in the numbers of birth defects and cancers being reported in Iraq and other war zones, a study has suggested.
Human exposure to heavy metals and neurotoxicants from the explosion of bombs, bullets, and other ammunition affects not only those directly targeted by bombardments but also troops and people living near military bases, according to research published in the scientific journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment.
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an Iranian toxicologist and lead author of the report, said “alarming” levels of lead were found in the “baby” or “deciduous” teeth of Iraqi children with birth defects, compared with similar teeth donated from Lebanese and Iranian children.
“Deciduous teeth from Iraqi children with birth defects had remarkably higher levels of Pb [lead],” she said during a recent visit to London. “Two Iraqi teeth had four times more Pb, and one tooth had as much as 50 times more Pb than samples from Lebanon and Iran.”
The study is important, because there has been scant research on how years of warfare across the Middle East have impacted local civilian populations, and data is hard to collect.
However, the few investigations that have been conducted suggest sharp increases in congenital birth defects, premature births, miscarriages and leukaemia cases in Iraq and other war zones, a finding supported by interviews with doctors.
The study supports claims that the long-term health of many thousands of former US soldiers was devastated by air pollution caused by the unregulated burning of huge volumes of military waste in hundreds of open air “burn pits” during the Iraq war.
More than 85,000 US Iraq war veterans who have signed a government registerhave been diagnosed with respiratory and breathing problems, cancers, neurological diseases, depression and emphysema since returning from Iraq. About half have stated that they were exposed to the burn pits.
The toll among soldiers has been documented in testimonies given to the US Department of Veterans Affairs and in a new book, The Burn Pits, based on interviews with 500 veterans exposed to pollution. They record how foam, electronics, metal cans, rubber tyres, ammunition, explosives, human faeces, animal carcasses, batteries, asbestos insulation and heavy metal waste were doused in jet fuel and set on fire during the Iraq war.
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A new study reveals that the cheap cloth masks, most commonly used in highly polluted areas in Asia and Southeast Asia, could not protect people from the harmful effects of air pollution.
The study, published in the Journal of Exposure & Environmental Epidemiology, showed that inexpensive cloth mask, about 10 to 15 cents each, performed poorly compared to standard hygiene mask known as the N95, which costs about $3 to $4 each.
“This has clear public health risk,” said Richard Peltier, an environmental health scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-author of the study, in astatement. “Especially if an individual makes personal choices not to avoid high concentration environments because they assume they are protected from these contaminants.”
For the study, the researchers conducted a series of experiments on various types of mask: one pleated surgical type, two cloths and one cone-shaped cloth with exhalation flaps. The researches simulated real-world conditions and tested the effectiveness of each mask in filtering out five different synthetic aerosol particle sizes plus three particle sizes of diluted whole diesel exhaust.
Read further at natureworldnews.com
Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.
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The new R49-million coal sampling laboratory opened at the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) on Wednesday ensures faster sample turnaround times from a state-of-the-art facility built in partnership with leading sampling service provider SGS South Africa.
Swiss-headquartered SGS, which employs 2 500 employees in South Africa and 85 000 people across the world, focuses on assisting companies to protect their brand, SGS COO Africa Fred Herren said at the well-attended opening ceremony.
Outgoing RBCT CEO Nosipho Siwisa-Damasane described the new plant as a marketing tool that ensured a stepped-up world-class certification with a 25% improvement in sample turnaround time. The impressive facility supports efficient coal preparation, sampling and certification, with a 60% size increase on the old facility at 2 203 m2. SGS is playing a build, operate and transfer partnership role for a sampling throughput capacity of 110-million tonnes of coal a year, with the support of a “visionary” RBCT board that allowed the project to be completed on budget and on schedule.
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Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.
Dust monitoring training courses
Chilekwa Kampeshi attended one of the fallout dust monitoring training courses in Pretoria and is transferring the knowledge and expertise to people in Zambia. So far eight people from four mines and one cement factory have had discussions in this regard. One unit has been positioned at a school for demonstration purposes. The bucket will be collected after one month to determine the dust levels at the school for the month in mg/m2/day.
Contact us for information on our training courses. – www.dustwatch.com
The Botswana Mine Workers Union (BMWU) has urged the government to set up a bargaining council to safeguard the welfare of workers who suffer crippling and fatal injuries while working in the mines. The call came after one Bamangwato Concession Limited (BCL) worker suffered a broken hip bone after the ore-face he was working on collapsed and buried him under an avalanche of rocks following an underground blasting operation at the mine in Selebi Phikwe on Wednesday evening.
The accident came just three weeks after another that left four workers dead and six critically injured after their transit cage malfunctioned and plunged back underground while hauling workers up from an underground working station of the State-owned nickel mining company. In a statement issued late on Wednesday night, BCL spokesperson James Molosankwe said the injured worker was “responding well” to treatment at the mine hospital, but gave no details on the injuries. However, BMWU president Jack Tlhagale called for a thorough investigation of the circumstances of the accident and the mine’s safety systems. To protect workers from losing out to employers in the light of the increasing number of fatal and crippling mine accidents rises, Tlhagale said there was a need for a bargaining council to represent workers and ensure that accident victims and their dependents were cared for and compensated accordingly. “A bargaining council in the mining sector would mean that during times of fatalities like these, we can have a platform dedicated to handling and preventing similar accidents from recurring in the mines,” Tlhagale said.
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Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.
South African power utility Eskom’s latest pay hike offer could lead the cash-strapped power utility into deeper cost cuts, the state-owned firm said on Thursday. Eskom confirmed that it had offered to pay 7% more to all blue-collar workers, upping its offer from 5.75%, during negotiations with workers represented by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on this week.
Eskom’s spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe said the energy regulator had recommened in 2012 that it links wage raises to inflation. The present offer by the utility is above inflation, which stands at 6.1%. “The 7% offer we have in place is beyond what the regulator indicated to us, the regulator had given us a type of benchmark for inflation-linked increases,” he said. “Now that we exceeded by at least one% point, we will have to make deeper cuts elsewhere so that we don’t affect our financial liquidity negatively,” Phasiwe said. Eskom plans to reduce costs by R61-billion ($4-billion) over the next three years, Phasiwe said, adding that the company has already cut back on travel and some of its executives were no longer flying first class. He said the firm would look for new areas to cut costs but did not elaborate. Eskom, which provides virtually all of the electricity in Africa’s most industrialised country, faced a crippling cash crunch last year that prompted an R80-billion ($5-billion) injection by the government. NUM has said it would seek the views of its members on the latest pay increase. The union had initially demanded a 15% raise for its lowest paid members and a 13% raise for its highest paid staff.
Originally found at www.miningweekly.com – Read more
Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.
Some more articles on air pollution – smoke plume expected to decrease the air quality in Canada’s Annapolis region and what the US wants to do about air quality standards. Also Panasonic has a new air purifier for a pollution free home!
Smoke associated with a forest fire in Annapolis County, near Seven Mile Lake, is being carried southeastward over portions of Annapolis and Queens County. An approaching frontal feature will result in a wind shift, which will redirect the smoke into Lunenburg and Kings counties.
Reduced air quality can be expected downwind and in the vicinity of the smoke plume.
Higher pollution levels are expected to persist into Aug. 11.
Environment Canada is warning that individuals may experience symptoms such as increased coughing, throat irritation, headaches or shortness of breath, especially during exercise. Children, seniors, and those with cardiovascular or lung disease, such as asthma, are especially at risk. The province is urging anyone with health concerns to call 811.
The warning, issued jointly with the Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness, also warns that wearing a mask is not the best way to protect your health during a smoke event. Masks may lead to a false sense of security, which may encourage increased physical activity and time spent outdoors, meaning increased exposure to smoke. They can also make breathing more difficult.
People with lung diseases, such as asthma and COPD, can be particularly sensitive to air pollution. They will generally experience more serious health effects at lower levels. Pollution can aggravate their diseases, leading to increased medication use, doctor and emergency room visits, and hospital visits.
It’s suggested that anyone with breathing difficulties stay inside and find an indoor place that’s cool and ventilated. Using an air conditioner that cools and filters air may help, as opening the windows may let in more polluted air. If your home isn’t air-conditioned, consider going to a public place – such as a library, shopping mall or recreation centre – that is air-conditioned.
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The air you breathe could be killing you. But tougher air quality standards could fix that, research by the American Thoracic Society suggests.
The research found that thousands of lives could be spared if levels of ozone and fine particles were reduced, according to HealthDay News. The study, published in the August edition of the journal Annals of the American Thoracic Society, found that 9,320 lives could be saved each year with adjustments to standards. The study recommended shifting the eight-hour ozone standard to 0.060 parts per million, rather than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) standard of 0.070 parts per million and making the fine particle annual standard of 11 micrograms per cubic meter, instead of the EPA’s 12 microgram standard.
These standards would have further benefits, according to the American Thoracic Society. It would reduce serious health events — like heart attacks and hospital admissions — by 21,400. So-called “adverse impact days,” e.g. missing school or work, would drop by 19 million, the study also found.
See the article and watch the video – click here
Everyone on earth knows that air pollution is hazardous to health. The effects of air pollution can have devastating effects on your health and the environment. In scientific terms, air pollution encompasses a variety of pollutants like nitrates, ozone, sulphur dioxide and PM10. In fact PM2.5, one of most deadly forms of pollutants, has been witnessed in an alarming volume in the air in some of the Indian cities. Exposure to PM2.5 in children means reduced lung functioning, increase in asthma and respiratory illnesses.
Japanese consumer electronics firm Panasonic has come up with specially designed air purifiers for the consumers to combat poisonous particles like PM 2.5 in the air. We got the F-PXH55M air purifier for a product evaluation, let us check out some of its key features.
Out of the box, the F-PXH55M comes across as a pleasing and neat-looking piece of equipment that will surely not look odd in your house. I installed the device in my living room for about a fortnight and this Panasonic air purifier is pretty adept at making the room pollution-free. Company officials inform that their new air purifier helps to combat the growing concern of indoor pollution and allergies.
The F-PXH55M has a house dust catcher and 3D circulation air flow system which helps to eliminate some of the big particles like hair and dust, and the fine dust particles, germs and mould. I tested the air purifier in my Noida home and it is pretty efficient in removing dust particles flying all over in the air due to construction in the neighbourhood. As far as the 3D circulation airflow feature is concerned, basically this enables suction of the particles from the front panel of the air purifier, which according to me is a more efficient way of functioning.
Then, the F-PXH55M has Nanoe technology integrated in its system which not only improves the quality of air by inhibiting the micro particles with size upto PM2.5, but also improves the living environment and health conditions for pets. At a technical level, Nanoe is water-wrapped capsule with plentiful OH radicals. OH radicals possess the characteristics of inhibiting bacteria and viruses and improving air quality. Also it helps in keeping skin hydrated and reducing odour. Various tests have proven that Nanoe technology can improve the living environment and health condition of pets.
Then, the Panasonic air purifier’s Composite Air Filter consists of three kinds of technology—Super alleru-buster, Green Tea Catechin and Anti-bacteria Enzyme. Panasonic claims that the air pirifier can inhibit 17 kinds of virus, bacteria and allergens up to 99%.
Available in stylish and compact design the smart Panasonic air purifier comes with Econavi technology that monitors the operations of the product according to the requirement. It also minimises unnecessary operations by monitoring the daily life pattern of
the consumer.
Priced at R31,995, the F-PXH55M air purifier also removes odour such as smoke from cigarettes and cooking. Its Eco mode sensor controls the operations according to the activities to cleanse the air while conserving the energy.
In summary, the Panasonic F-PXH55M can work wonders for indoor air quality, and can leave your home significantly cleaner.
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Dust Monitoring Equipment – providing equipment, services and training in dust fallout management to the mining industry.
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