Development and quantification of a dust reduction program in longwall mining at metropolitan colliery - a case study

Harmful respirable dust produced during longwall mining is a major concern for production, safety and the health of workers in the underground coal mining sector both in Australia and globally, Longwall personnel are exposed to harmful dust from multiple dust generation sources including, but not limited to intake entry, belt entry, stageloader/cnisher, shearer, shield advance and dust ingress from falling goal or over pressurisation of the goal the increase in production created from the advancement in longwall equipment, dust loads have significantly increased and this has resulted in a potentially greater exposure level to personnel. Metropolitan Colliery, located at Helensburgli in NSW, Australia, in conjunction with the University of Wollongong, P11/116 Laboratories and EnviroCon, has implemented a dust reduction program Utilising a recently developed Dust Mitigation Efficiency Model to quantify dust loads produced during the cutting cycle. With the quantification of.this benchmark dust load production along with the quantification of installed control efficiencies at independent sources of dust generation, Metropolitan Colliery, with the installation of the latest shearer scrubber technology has successfully reduced the respirable dust levels in excess of 70% of benchmark levels on their operating Iongwali This reduction will have a significant and immediate positive effebt on employees, production and operating costs which will be maintained throughout the life of the mine

The association between fibrinogen reactivity to mental stress and high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T in healthy adults

BACKGROUND: Plasma fibrinogen is considered as a positive mediator between mental stress and cardiovascular disease because it is an acute-phase protein released in response to mental stress and a coagulation factor. However those three factors have never been studied together within a single integrated framework, using cardiac troponin T as a marker of cardiovascular risk. METHODS: 491 disease-free men and women aged 53-76 were tested for fibrinogen levels before, immediately after, and following recovery from standardized mental stress tasks. We measured plasma cardiac troponin T using a high-sensitivity assay (HS-CTnT) and coronary calcification using electron-beam dual-source computed tomography. RESULTS: The average fibrinogen concentration increased by 5.1% (s.d.=7.3) in response to stress and then tended to return to baseline values. People with higher baseline fibrinogen values had smaller increases (blunted responses) following the stress task (P=0.001), and people with higher stress responses showed better recovery (P<0.001). In unadjusted analyses, higher baseline fibrinogen was associated with higher chances of having detectable HS-CTnT (P=0.072) but, conversely, higher fibrinogen response was associated with lower chances of having detectable HS-CTnT (P=0.007). The adjustment for clinical, inflammatory, and haemostatic factors, as well as for coronary calcification eliminated the effect of baseline fibrinogen, whereas the negative association between fibrinogen response and HS-CTnT remained robust: the odds of detectable HS-CTnT halved for each 10% increase in fibrinogen concentration due to stress (OR=0.49, P=0.007, 95% CI=0.30-0.82). CONCLUSIONS: Greater fibrinogen responses to mental stress are associated with lower likelihood of detectable high-sensitivity troponin T plasma concentration. A more dynamic fibrinogen response appears to be advantageous for cardiovascular health

The global burden of cancer attributable to risk factors, 2010-19 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background Understanding the magnitude of cancer burden attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors is crucial for development of effective prevention and mitigation strategies. We analysed results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 to inform cancer control planning efforts globally. Methods The GBD 2019 comparative risk assessment framework was used to estimate cancer burden attributable to behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risk factors. A total of 82 risk-outcome pairs were included on the basis of the World Cancer Research Fund criteria. Estimated cancer deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) in 2019 and change in these measures between 2010 and 2019 are presented. Findings Globally, in 2019, the risk factors included in this analysis accounted for 4.45 million (95% uncertainty interval 4.01-4.94) deaths and 105 million (95.0-116) DALYs for both sexes combined, representing 44.4% (41.3-48.4) of all cancer deaths and 42.0% (39.1-45.6) of all DALYs. There were 2.88 million (2.60-3.18) risk-attributable cancer deaths in males (50.6% [47.8-54.1] of all male cancer deaths) and 1.58 million (1.36-1.84) risk-attributable cancer deaths in females (36.3% [32.5-41.3] of all female cancer deaths). The leading risk factors at the most detailed level globally for risk-attributable cancer deaths and DALYs in 2019 for both sexes combined were smoking, followed by alcohol use and high BMI. Risk-attributable cancer burden varied by world region and Socio-demographic Index (SDI), with smoking, unsafe sex, and alcohol use being the three leading risk factors for risk-attributable cancer DALYs in low SDI locations in 2019, whereas DALYs in high SDI locations mirrored the top three global risk factor rankings. From 2010 to 2019, global risk-attributable cancer deaths increased by 20.4% (12.6-28.4) and DALYs by 16.8% (8.8-25.0), with the greatest percentage increase in metabolic risks (34.7% [27.9-42.8] and 33.3% [25.8-42.0]). Interpretation The leading risk factors contributing to global cancer burden in 2019 were behavioural, whereas metabolic risk factors saw the largest increases between 2010 and 2019. Reducing exposure to these modifiable risk factors would decrease cancer mortality and DALY rates worldwide, and policies should be tailored appropriately to local cancer risk factor burden. Copyright (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license.Peer reviewe

Factors

To determine frequency of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections caused by strains typically associated with community-acquired infections (USA300) among persons with healthcare-related risk factors (HRFs), we evaluated surveillance data. Of patients with HRFs, 18%–28 % had a “community-associated” strain, primarily USA300; of patients without HRFs, 26% had a “healthcare-associated ” strain, typically USA100. In the United States, initial reports of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections among injection drug users in Detroit in 1981 were followed by reports of MRSA associated with the deaths of 4 children in Minnesota and North Dakota in 1997 (1). For the next few years, public health personnel in several states investigated outbreaks of MRSA infections of skin and soft tissue among diverse populations who typically had little or no previous contact with the healthcare system, such as Native Americans (2), sports teams (3), prison inmates (4)