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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed an earlier ruling by the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission that required the government to average samples taken during multiple shifts.
The ruling came about after Alliance coal subsidiary Excel Mining brought the case to the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission after citations were issued against the company.
MSHA has based regular compliance determinations under the respirable coal mine dust standard on multiple samples taken over a single shift since 1975. Excel Mining had challenged that practice in contesting three citations for respirable dust violations that MSHA issued to the company in 1999.
The commission originally threw out those citations saying the measurements collected over one shift were not accurate enough. Whilst the appeal was pending the MSHA then took samples over multiple shifts.
"With this ruling we can identify overexposures using multiple samples in a single shift and require corrective action," MSHA assistant secretary Dave Lauriski said.
"Meanwhile, we await the results of current research on personal continuous dust monitors, which we hope will provide the next quantum jump in monitoring miners' dust exposures."
The United Mine Workers of America told AP it supported the MSHA’s appeal, stating averaged samples could mask a coal dust problem in a mine.
"They should quickly move back to the dust enforcement policy they had prior to the rule, which we believe is better for miners," Union official Joe Main told AP.
While waiting for results of the research on continuous dust monitors, the Federal mine agency recently suspended work on regulatory proposals that would allow compliance determinations based on a single full-shift sample as well as set new requirements for verifying coal mine operators' dust control plans. MSHA said the Excel decision would not affect the proposals.
Federal coal mine health standards provide that each coal mine operator must maintain the average concentration of respirable dust at or below 2.0 milligram per cubic meter of air on each shift.
