Details - Public Health Image Library(PHIL)

ID#:

9549

Caption:

This historic image, from the 1950s to 1960s, depicted three miners in the subterranean confines of a submarine, St. Jonn Canadian, iron ore mine, using a mechanized loader. This device would excavate ore from the mine walls, and run the raw material up a conveyor belt, dumping it from the end into a coal bin rail car. In this fashion, the ore would be transported up, and out of the mine to the surface. The foreground miners wore no protective filtered breathing devices, or any protective eyewear. Due to the presence of airborne coal dust in the small confines of a mine, miners are predisposed to the long-term negative health effects of this profession including black lung disease, or coal-workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP). Today, the Federal government’s stringent regulations on the level of coal dust permissible in the air of a coalmine, and the requisite use of filtered breathing devices, has dramatically lowered the number of cases of black lung disease.

High Resolution:

Click here for hi-resolution image (4.26 MB)

Content Provider(s):

CDC/ Barbara Jenkins, NIOSH

Creation Date:

1950

Photo Credit:

Links:

Categories:

CDC Organization