Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPRs) for Protection from Respirable Dust in Underground Mines

Underground mining operations use several remedial measures to alleviate the miners' exposure to respirable dust. This includes maintaining the ventilation airflow, deploying scrubbers on equipment, and using water sprays to move air and dust away from the miners and to capture them. Despite these engineering controls, recent research shows an increased occurrence of exposure-related issues in the impacted miners. Masks and other PPE devices are considered the least preferred in the hierarchy of controls. However, they show a high protection factor if designed properly and according to recommendations. A Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) is a battery-operated personal scrubber that has found widespread application in industries. This respirator uses a blower to move air through a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter, delivering the purified air to the user. Its popularity is attributed to its high protection efficiency. This paper summarizes the current applications and evaluation methods of PAPRs. It strongly recommends their usage in underground mines to reduce the risk of mine dust lung diseases such as pneumoconiosis, asbestosis, silicosis, and others that do not have any conclusive treatment. While the high efficiency of the respirators has been demonstrated, we recommend further studies to investigate the unique challenges associated with their use in underground mines. Therefore, this paper also presents computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations as a tool to understand the performance of PAPRs in underground tunnels, which could help to understand not only the efficiency, but also the challenges associated with their implementation.