A Cumbrian quarry has become the first in the UK to trial new live air monitoring equipment, as part of a trial to improve safety for staff.
Burlington Stone, in Kirkby-in-Furness, is one of six businesses taking part in the industry-wide initiative.
The monitors continuously assesses the quantity of fine particles in the air, providing live as-it-happens data to managers in the factory.
While dust and respirable crystalline silica monitoring is a legislative requirement, samples are currently sent away for analysis.
The results can take two weeks to be returned to the quarry, and will not identify any spikes throughout the day.
Pete Walker, HSEQ manager at Burlington, part of the Holker group, explained that the problem with silica is that it is exceptionally fine.
“It’s a natural product from within rocks and minerals that we process. However, when you breathe it any fine particles present can sit deep in the lungs and lead to respiratory illness.
“We create everything here, from roofing slates to gravestones, kitchen worktops to aggregate for roads and driveways, so we are cutting and breaking stone in every which way possible, and the stone we quarry has around 40% silica.”
He said the live monitors were not designed to replace the regulatory requirement of sampling, but to help managers know in real-time the air quality, meaning action can quickly be taken to address any problems.
He added: “I can identify the hotspots immediately. There is a safety level and the regulatory sample might show that the activity produced a sample that was under that over the eight-hour period.
“However, under those current tests we wouldn’t know if one particular aspect of that activity is more risky during a different stage of the process or different time of the day.”
The trial is being run by the Minerals Product Association, the trade organisation for the quarrying and minerals industry, in conjunction with Trolex Engineering, which supplied the technology. It began on January 8 and ran until January 29, when the monitors were passed onto the next participating quarry.
Pete said that Burlington had been delighted to spearhead the initiative, both from the opportunity to learn more about how safety could be improved further, but also to put the quarry on the map among other UK market-leaders.
“The data was absolutely invaluable to us,” he said. “It certainly opened my eyes: it helped us to see, for example, that in part of the factory we have 10 employees all doing the same activity, using the same tools, at the same time, but because of their different techniques we found a substantial difference in total dust particles from one end of the factory to the other.
“We are able to use these monitors to better and more quickly understand a new machine or new process, so we could monitor that in live time and get a real understanding without having to wait for the laboratory analysis.
“We are the first to kickstart the trial because, although we are not one the major national quarrying companies, we do every element of quarrying and a wide variety of downstream added value processes here which is extremely rare. We also got involved because we want to be part of what the industry is leading on.”
Burlington has already identified some improvements as a result of the three week trial, as well as some basic changes. All of their findings will now be analysed and shared with the MPA and Trolex and the rest of the industry.
Mike Birkett, HSEQ advisor at Burlington, added: “The feedback from the operators was that the monitors were comfortable to wear, very small and very light. People were genuinely interested to find out the results.
“It’s a bonus that you could evaluate the data and take that down to the operating floor and ask them about an anomaly at a certain time, and they can explain what might have been different at that time, to help identify hotspots.”
