Sullivan Mine fatalities and the role of air quality in mine-related incidents.

British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium

Sullivan Mine fatalities and the role of air quality in mine-related incidents. Phillip, Mark; Hockley, Daryl; Dawson, Bruce B.

Abstract

During May 15 – 17, 2006, four fatalities occurred at a partially reclaimed waste rock dump at the closed Teck Cominco Sullivan Mine near Kimberley, British Columbia, Canada. The fatalities occurred at the toe of the dump in a seepage monitoring station that is connected hydraulically, via a pipe and dump toe drain, to the covered acid generating waste rock. Since August 2006, the dump has been heavily instrumented and studied in stages. Results have shown that atmospheric air temperature, not barometric pressure, is the dominant control on air movement between the waste dump and the atmosphere. This air movement, which changes direction seasonally, results in a gas containing elevated carbon dioxide and depressed oxygen exiting the dump. Air quality has been a historic mining issue that is now managed with testing methods and modern ventilation. Advancements aside, air quality remains an issue for current operations and legacy sites. This paper presents recent results of the Sullivan Mine fatalities technical investigations and reviews historic and recent incidents involving poor air quality at mine sites.

Item Metadata

Title	Sullivan Mine fatalities and the role of air quality in mine-related incidents.
Creator	Phillip, Mark; Hockley, Daryl; Dawson, Bruce B.
Contributor	British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium; University of British Columbia. Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering
Date Issued	2008
Description	During May 15 – 17, 2006, four fatalities occurred at a partially reclaimed waste rock dump at the closed Teck Cominco Sullivan Mine near Kimberley, British Columbia, Canada. The fatalities occurred at the toe of the dump in a seepage monitoring station that is connected hydraulically, via a pipe and dump toe drain, to the covered acid generating waste rock. Since August 2006, the dump has been heavily instrumented and studied in stages. Results have shown that atmospheric air temperature, not barometric pressure, is the dominant control on air movement between the waste dump and the atmosphere. This air movement, which changes direction seasonally, results in a gas containing elevated carbon dioxide and depressed oxygen exiting the dump. Air quality has been a historic mining issue that is now managed with testing methods and modern ventilation. Advancements aside, air quality remains an issue for current operations and legacy sites. This paper presents recent results of the Sullivan Mine fatalities technical investigations and reviews historic and recent incidents involving poor air quality at mine sites.
Extent	641142 bytes
Genre	Conference Paper
Type	Text
File Format	application/pdf
Language	eng
Date Available	2009-06-15
Provider	Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI	10.14288/1.0042551
URI	http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9190
Affiliation	Non UBC
Peer Review Status	Unreviewed
Scholarly Level	Other
Copyright Holder	British Columbia Technical and Research Committee on Reclamation
Rights URI	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository	DSpace

Open Collections

British Columbia Mine Reclamation Symposium