Presented at the 2019 Mining Health and Safety Conference by Dr. Sandra Dorman, Centre for Research in Occupational Safety and Health (CROSH)
Mine Rescue was identified as a ‘priority issue’ by the Ministry of Labour’s Mining Health, Safety, and Prevention Review, in 2015. Recommendations included instituting a fitness standard and mitigating heat stress. During the International Mines Rescue Competition, held in Sudbury in 2016, 74 mine rescue workers, from around the world, volunteered to have their physiological responses measured while competing in the underground mine rescue simulation to better understand the requirements necessary to meet these recommendations. All workers wore personal monitors and ingested core temperature capsules (n=54) to assess their heart rate, respiration rate, energy expenditure, oxygen consumption, core, and skin temperature, and this data was analyzed in context of both team position and task performed. This presentation will review the results from this study.