ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Work comfort studies have been extensively conducted, especially in the underground and meteorological fields resulting in an avalanche of recommendations for their evaluation. Nevertheless, no known or universally accepted model for comprehensively assessing the thermal work condition of the underground mine environment is currently available. Current literature presents several methods and techniques, but none of these can expansively assess the underground mine environment since most methods consider only one or a few defined factors and neglect others. Some are specifically formulated for the built and meteorological climates, thus making them unsuitable to accurately assess the climatic conditions in underground development and production workings. METHODS: This paper presents a series of sensitivity analyses to assess the impact of environmental parameters and metabolic rate on the thermal comfort for underground mining applications. An approach was developed in the form of a “comfort model” which applied comfort parameters to extensively assess the climatic conditions in the deep, hot, and humid underground mines. RESULTS: Simulation analysis predicted comfort limits in the form of required sweat rate and maximum skin wettedness. Tolerable worker exposure times to minimize thermal strain due to dehydration are predicted. CONCLUSION: The analysis determined the optimal air velocity for thermal comfort to be 1.5 m/s. The results also identified humidity to contribute more to deviations from thermal comfort than other comfort parameters. It is expected that this new approach will significantly help in managing heat stress issues in underground mines and thus improve productivity, safety, and health.
Subject(s)
Avalanches , Climate , Dehydration , Efficiency , Hot Temperature , Humidity , Methods , Miners , Mining , Skin , SweatABSTRACT
Este artículo trata de ciertos tipos de migración y movilidad en Mariquita, Armero-Guayabal y Honda, municipios del Magdalena Medio caldense y tolimense. El problema que se planeta es cómo la migración y la movilidad no son procesos unívocos, ni se pueden estudiar a partir de una sola dinámica; por el contrario, se entrecruzan circunstancias no sólo de causa de estos fenómenos, sino también de implicaciones en los lugares de llegada o acogida que, en su conjunto (causas e implicaciones), dan explicación a la existencia de la migración y la movilidad de personas, bienes y servicios. La metodología que se sigue es la de multiplanos etnográficos, tomando como discurso de referencia las voces directas de los narradores que fueron entrevistados en distintos momentos y escenarios de sus propios municipios durante los años 2008 y 2009.
This article describes certain types of migration and mobility in Mariquita, Armero-Guayabal and Honda, municipalities belonging to the mid Magdalena River basin in Caldas and Tolima (Colombia). The problem presented is how migration and mobility are neither univocal processes nor they can they be studied from a unique dynamic; on the contrary, they crosslink circumstances not only of the causes of this phenomena but also of the implications in the arrival or reception places which, together (causes and implications) explain the existence of people, goods and services migrations and mobility. The methodology used was the ethnographic multi-plane method taking as a reference discourse the live voices of the narrators which were interviewed at different times and sceneries of their own municipalities during 2008 and 2009.