Report to the secretary of state for the home department on the causes of death in colliery explosions and underground fires, with special reference to the explosions at Tylorstown, Brancepeth and Micklefield / by John Haldane.

  • John Scott Haldane
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report to the secretary of state for the home department on the causes of death in colliery explosions and underground fires, with special reference to the explosions at Tylorstown, Brancepeth and Micklefield / by John Haldane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    consisting chiefly of hydrogen and methane (fire-damp), together with about 5 per cent, of carbon monoxide, 5 per cent, of higher hydro-carbons, about 2 per cent, of sulphuretted hydrogen or ammonium sulphide, and a little carbonic acid and nitrogen. The first portion of gas which comes off on distillation is said to consist, however, chiefly of methane ; and the gas which bums in the explosion will probably be this first portion. If burnt in a sufficiency of air for complete oxidation, such gas would yield an after-damp containing when undiluted about 87 per cent, of nitrogen, 12 per cent, of carbonic acid, and *2 per cent, of sulphurous acid. If diluted with half its volume of air, the mixture thus formed would still contain sufficient sulphurous acid to cause danger to life (see below),* although apart from the sulphurous acid the mixture would cause no great distress. If burnt in an insufficient supply of air (as is certainly the case in many parts of a dust explosion), the supposed mixture of ga3 would yield an after-damp containing, besides about 80 to 85 ])er cent, of nitrogen, a mixture of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and a little sulphurous acid or sulphuretted hydrogen, and, doubtless, other gaseous or volatile products in small quantities. This mixture might, moreover, be diluted with additional gas distilled off from the coal dust by the action of the intensely hot air left behind in the moment following the explosion, and would probably be very slightly, if at all, heavier than air. Now, it was proved both by the results of the examination of the bodies found in all parts of the pit, and from the symptoms of the rescuers, that, whatever poisonous gases or vapours existed in the coal dust after-damp at Tylorstown, the gas present in the most poisonous proportions was carbon monoxide. Hence, in many if not all parts, of the exploding mixture there must have been an insufficiency of oxygen for complete combustion. The presence of carbon monoxide in the Tylorstown after-damp was certainly not an exceptional fact. Such evidence as I have been able to collect from records of previous explosions, and from those who have themselves been in after-damp, seems to point distinctly towards carbon monoxide being present in dangerous amount in the after-damp of all great colliery explosions. Speaking of the after-damp met with in explosions in Durham, the Messrs. Atkinson record the fact that they have themselves seen rescuers fall over while the lamps were burning brightly and giving no indications of the presence of any kind of gas.f They also mention that some of the bodies were found beside lamps in which the oil was exhausted, as if it had burned itself out after the men were dead. These observations lead them to conclude that carbon monoxide was present. An analysis made for one of them by Professor Bedson showed the presence of 2-5 per cent, of carbon monoxide in a sample of gas collected a few days after the Usworth explosion from behind a stopping near a fire caused by the explosion. This gas might, however, as they remark, have been due to the fire. In his report on the explosion at the- Hyde Colliery (near Manchester), Mr. W. N. Atkinson also records evidence of the probable presence of carbon monoxide. In Mr. Martin's report on the explo- sion in 1891 at Malago Yale Colliery (Bristol district), the evidence is recorded (pp. 22 and 18) of Charles Poultney, night oversman, who was overcome by after- damp, and was found by the rescuers unconscious and severely burnt by his lamp, which was still in his hands. In Mr. Martin's report (p. 8) on. the Camerton explosion (Radstock district), it is recorded that Messrs. Brathwaite and Moon, the Manager and Under-manager, were overcome by after-damp, while the naked lights which they carried were unaffected. After the explosion at the Albion Colliery in 1891 several of the rescuers told me that they became weak and hardly able to stand, although their lamps were burning (see p. 39). J There are also very many other cases recorded in which rescuers have been overcome or killed by after-damp ; and the fact of after- damp being so exceedingly dangerous points strongly to the constant presence of carbon monoxide. A man carrying a lamp could never go unsuspectingly into air dangerous from deficiency of oxygen; and clanger from carbonic acid, apart from deficiency of oxygen, is quite out of the question (see p. 15). With a view to ascertaining whether more direct evidence was not obtainable as to the presence or absence of carbon monoxide, and the actual causes of death in colliery explosions, I have searched the medical evidence presented at a number of inquests. As a rule, however, no very serious attempt seems to have been made to ascertain the actual causes of death, beyond the evident facts that the men had * I found that crude coal gas, burnt experimentally in the laboratory, yielded a product which, even when much diluted, produced great irritation of the eyes and respiratory passages, f Explosions in Coal Mines, p. 112. j I examined the blood of one of the horses killed at this explosion, and could find with the spectroscope no signs of the presence of carbon monoxide. Probably it bad been killed instantaneously, or else died in fresh air, like the horses referred to on page 6.