COMBATING THE DISEASE.

Thames Star, Volume XLV, Issue 10608, 7 January 1909, Page 2

COMBATING THE DISEASE.

"DRY" AND f'WET" MINiINIG. i "Miners' complaint," as it. :.s commonly called, or miners' phthisis, is a disease peculiar, as its names impl'.es, to underground workers:. Many eiforts have been made to combat it, and at the' present time the disease is being carefully studied by medical men, who are anxious to find some scientific moans of reducing :t to a minimum. Am interestiii.g letter on the subject haw been received by Dr. Purdy, district health officer ait Auckliind, from Ih\ Porter,, the medical officer of health at Johannesburg. Df' Porter wr'.tes: — . . '

! "I may say that I -am at .present a member of the Government Mining Regulations Commission, which will .report, in about six or seven months' | time. We have gone pretty tharoughlv into -the question of nrrmiecs' phthI i&is, and we are convinced that, on the Rand at any rate, the evil can be successfully combatted by the conversion of "dry" to- "wet" mining by the use of j©t® in all development work and in■ drill-Ing 1 of what are called locally back holes, that is^ holes which, are being drilled upwards .iUJJ will not. therefore retain waterr-Wlie Western, iAjustrialia.ni Cammission, lo its* report of 1905, was very favourably iniipres&ed' by the of an apparatus devised by Mr Armand Caudan, of Kalgoorlie, for use wlfch 1 rock drills!. It consists of an adi justable tubular arm, with a trumpet shaped mouth, which he proposed to fit pretty closely to the rock face ! round the drill hole by means of a pmeumattio eusihfiojn., P . . Engineiers oni the 'Rand, however, consider this suggestion an rmpracticaiblei one, 'as miners -who will not take the I trouble to use the ordinary jet will certainly not take th!e trouble 'toy adjust a mechanism of this kind. ! "I think that lam safe in say lag,' adds Dr. Porter, "that our Commission will ait once recommend the compulsory provision of sufficiently clean j water for jet purposes at each working face in development work, and the heavy penalising .of the miner who fails to uisie the water in. drilling holes. It appears to me that really 6he only placeHin whichl the exhaust apparatus would! fill a useful purpose I on these fields is in a very steep rise,. where the use of the water jet will [practically meanl that the men are kept wet throughout the whole shift. Aigaimsit the water jet, is the objection that wetness favours ankylostomiiasis, but this cam be combaitited, as in the Belgian and WestphaHan mines, by proper attention to eaccrexaemb dis.posal."