ABSTRACT
NIOSH’s mission to protect the health and safety of workers has a unique role in underground mines where the miner’s escape from toxic POC in the event of a fire is severely restricted. One aspect of the miner’s protection is reliable early in-mine fire detection. Another equally important issue is discrimination of true fire alarm signals from nuisance emissions produced alarm signals associated with normal mining activities. The in-mine use of an atmospheric mine monitoring system to monitor hazardous conditions has increased significantly over the past decade (Panigrahi & Ghose, 1999).
