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Comment by gnu8 | Hacker News Reader

It's clear that no one should be working in a mine without at minimum an N95 mask and probably a PAPR (powered air purifying respirator). I wonder if there is any reason at all, other than preserving corporate profit margins, that the coal industry has failed to adopt simple and well understood industrial hygiene practices.

Clean coal indeed.

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That's a good point -- why aren't mining companies buying PAPRs for their workers? PAPRs are designed for difficult conditions like hot and damp, and at least in my experience, the constant flow of air over your face cools you down and is a lot more comfortable than a traditional respirator. Mining is a relatively well paid profession. Yes, PAPRs are expensive ($1,500), and depending on how often they need to be changed, the cost of filters can quickly add up, but even for a heartless corporation, wouldn't it make monetary sense to invest a few $1,000 a year per worker to keep your most experienced employees, avoid lawsuits, etc.?

PAPRs also suck to wear. I agree it makes sense to force the issue given the obvious benefit of not being unable to breath at 40, but a short sighted view along with tough guy attitude can go against common sense without robust regulation. I had to wear those in nuclear environments and they limit vision significantly and beep constantly if you bend over and choke the hose at all.

> I had to wear those in nuclear environments and they limit vision significantly and beep constantly if you bend over and choke the hose at all.

These current-day issues and other considerations like them appear, at least to my layman's eye, to be solvable problems.

Now, whether or not they are morally/economically feasible, trivial vs. non-trivial to introduce solutions for, and if they align with both the users' and the companies' producing the units needs are the major challenges.

Surely it's cheaper to provide this kind of protection (I assumed it would be OSHA-mandated honestly) than it is to pay for the healthcare and/or lawsuits that follow?

I admittedly haven't read the article yet, but it's surprising to me that black lung / industrial air quality isn't something that OSHA (or similar) is tasked with ensuring ample worker protections for.

Presumably if the coal industry has regulatory capture then the rules are written to allow for easily exploitable loopholes. Not to mention many people simply can't afford a lawyer or have no way of getting to one.

So a lawsuit becomes simply an expected cost of doing business, like how some software companies treat data leaks.

>In the past 30 years, the biggest coal seams were mined out in Appalachia, leaving thinner seams coursing through sandstone.

...

>And because there's no coal, it is considered development mining or construction. So sampling the air for toxic dust is not required, even though it is the most dangerous dust. Former MSHA officials told us some inspectors did it, but most did not.

Hopefully the lawsuits cost them. However the folks that make these decisions never see the consequences; they've taken their bonuses and gone by now. Furthermore the mine doesn't pay for medicare. We all do.

"Furthermore the mine doesn't pay for medicare. We all do. "

Exactly. Worst case they can file for bankruptcy and blame evil environmentalists.

However the folks that make these decisions never see the consequences; they've taken their bonuses and gone by now.

It's worse than that. There might not be a company left when these guys start needing health care in a big way. (Or the mine's environmental impact is starting to be felt, or whatever)

That's normal: a mine can be structured as a dividend paying company (with one big asset) that gradually becomes less and less valuable until it's worthless at the end. If the company goes bankrupt at that point, no big deal, it's already paid what it was meant to pay for its investors. And yes, management.

In NZ employers with higher risk pay more to the medical pool. Accidents outside work are paid for from common pool. Chronic diseases from unhealthy lifestyle (or bad luck) are not compensated.

I can't think of a better system.

The time-lag for the health problems to appear allows current management to take the risk and extract extra profit (and bonuses). That the company may be liable for health care costs of employees or is sued after current management have moved on or retired is an externality for them personally.

"Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."

Apply this through the OSHA lense, and voila.

"Clean coal" was always a bullshit term like "light cigarettes". It was just a way to delay any real action.

Clean coal refers to scrubbing pollutants and possibly CO2 from emissions. It isn't necessarily bullshit.

It is BS because they never put anything behind it.

Indeed, and to clarify "clean coal" isn't referring to cleaning the coal, it is referring to increased effort put into trying to reduce released pollutants when using the coal.

There was a hilarious quote from a while back where a politician referred to train loads of "cleaned coal" heading out of Montana which created a misunderstanding about what clean coal technologies are trying to do. There is no "cleaned coal".

(Aside, I believe calling those technologies "clean coal" is quite hyperbolic, but that is a separate issue)

Coal mines vary widely in the amount of impurities in the coal they produce. Low-impurity coal requires less scrubbing to meet a give emissions target. Sulfur is the worst of the impurities -- it becomes sulfuric acid in the atmosphere and is precipitated by rain, causing concrete to erode.

The cleaner coal is called Anthracite [0]. The dirtier coal is Lignite [1]. Lignite is usually cleaned, by heating it up to drive out the water so it burns better (and weighs less during shipping.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignite

There is no thermodynamically possible way to generate power from burning coal while also removing the primary product of the reaction from the effluent. Clean coal is, necessarily, 100% bullshit.

That's not true at all. You can, for example, sequester it by injecting it into the earth.

By default you would then end up with less energy than you started with

>Clean coal is, necessarily, 100% bullshit

Necessarily = chemically and thermodynamically

I think the idea is not to turn the CO2 back into carbon and oxygen, but to store it somewhere other than the atmosphere. That is not thermodynamically impossible.

It can refer to: "reduce oxides of nitrogen (NOX) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission"

This was a boondoggle near my hometown: sttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healy_Clean_Coal_Project

Sheetrock/gypsum board is another byproduct: https://www.buildinggreen.com/primer/synthetic-gypsum

There was a wave of flue gas gypsum emitting acidic gasses around 2009, eating through copper plumbing and wiring. This was in Florida.

CO2 still has to go somewhere. Carbonation, industrial gasses, into the ground, or into the air.

I'm skeptical of clean or green in any product name. It's more about marketing.

>There was a wave of flue gas gypsum emitting acidic gasses around 2009, eating through copper plumbing and wiring. This was in Florida.

sounds like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_drywall rather than clean coal

My point was that clean coal can mean a lot of things and sometimes making one part of a product lifecycle "green" just passes the problem down the supply chain.

In this case, scrubbing the flue gasses and recycling the coal ash resulted in toxic drywall. This isn't to say all drywall is toxic but it illustrates one illusion of something being clean or green.

The ironic thing is that this illness is due to non-coal dust (silicates) in the air which are much finer than coal dust. And because they are non-coal dust, they escaped regulation for a long time.

Are coal mines hot like deep metal mines? In The Deep Dark [0], it started that many of the miners skimped on safety devices even when available because of the extreme temperature and humidity if nothing else.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307238776/ref=oh_aui_sear...

Respirators aren't all that expensive, you can buy one at a hardware store. Why wouldn't miners just bring their own?

Respirators are uncomfortable to wear. I know that might seem like silly reason considering the long term health consequences, but in industrial settings it's quite common for workers to ignore or disable any safety equipment that gets in their way.

You've just hit the nail on the head. PPE is an annoyance, especially in the form of devices that make critical bodily functions (like breathing and dissipating heat) difficult. Regulate all you want, workers will voluntarily remove the PPE often enough to incur respiratory damage just like they do with hearing protection in areas that aren't immediately deafeningly loud.

I listened to this on NPR earlier, didn't reread it, so I don't know if this isn't present in the piece, or other posters just didn't read. Miners said that the respirators got clogged quickly, and it would feel like someone had their hands over your mouth. And the respirators that are recommended and provided protect you from coal dust, but not what causes this disease, silica dust.

Not really sure what the solution is then. And it's easy to see why companies wouldn't bothering doing much about it.

The solution, as other companies have found, is for management and unions to work together to make safety a core part of the corporate culture.

Do you own a respirator? Why not?

I actually do, for wood working. Won't be breathing in all that sawdust.

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