Respirable Coal Dust and its Potential for Occupation Health (2018)

This 2018 paper was compiled to give guidance on respirable coal dust and its potential for occupational health issues. After a period of decades where there were no observed new cases of ‘black lung’ in Australia, a number of such cases have recently been identified.

AIOH recommends limiting worker RCD exposure to below an 8-hour time weighted average (TWA) guidance exposure value for the respirable dust fraction of 1.0 mg/m3, with the approach of applying a TWA value of 0.5 mg/m3 as an action level, which triggers investigation of the sources of exposure and implementation of suitable control strategies. Particular caution is advised with high rank coking coals and those with high levels of crystalline silica as they appear more fibrogenic.