Many underground mines do not have a qualified or dedicated occupational (industrial) hygienist on site, or even available as a resource. Many mine ventilation engineers do not even consider occupational exposure monitoring to be relevant to their role as an engineer. In many cases where occupational exposure monitoring is conducted, the mine ventilation engineer is not informed about the results of the monitoring, or if he is, cannot interpret correctly what these results mean. This bunker mentality separating occupational hygiene and ventilation engineering reduces the range of tools available to the ventilation engineer to actively adjust or tune the ventilation system to keep the underground environment healthy, or as healthy as it could otherwise be. This paper sets out the principles and practices that the mine ventilation engineer needs to know to be able to understand how to interpret occupational hygiene monitoring results, and the implications for the mine primary and secondary ventilation systems. Paper by D.J. Brake.
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