De Re Metallica - 1556 Inspiring guidelines

It happens that security messages can be seen as modern theoretical speeches, and not addressing the real needs of a given entity, whose employees and management knows better than others what has to be done in their day-to-day activities to care about occupational safety. And when the level of accidents is remaining stable, we may hear that – at the end – it is only a matter of fact which cannot be changed and which is specific to that very activity. I recall visiting a factory a few years ago and asking a few colleagues performing a rather potential dangerous operation what they were thinking about the safety measures – like wearing personal protecting devices – which they were due to apply. The most shared answer was that was “modern stuff invented by people not really knowing the reality of the work”. It is worth to mention that this factory did have quite a high accident frequency rate (FR1) …

One thing on which they were wrong was that the safety policies and the associated measures were modern stuff. Even if history does show that the industry has not been always perfect caring about operational safety, it was already centuries ago recognized that both for moral reasons and for the sake of the enterprise, safety was a must.

A quite perfect example is given by the book written by Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica (1), published in Latin in 1556, and which is dedicated to all the technics of mining; it is an example of a comprehensive approach of security, starting from a vision :

It remains for me to speak of the ailments and accidents of miners, and of the methods by which they can guard against these, for we should always devote more care to maintaining our health, that we may freely perform our bodily functions, than to making profits.

And then going through a risk analysis to identify the potential issues and proposing mitigations measures. A list of risks that is quite similar to the ones identified in our 5 top killers program:

·      Working at height

·      Confined space

·      Lifting operations

·      Control of hazardous energy sources

·      Mobile work equipment

Which are complemented by some specific ? mining risks ? : Of the illnesses, some affect the joints, others attack the lungs, some the eyes, and finally some are fatal to men.

Where water in shafts is abundant and very cold, it frequently injures the limbs, for cold is harmful to the sinews. To meet this, miners should make themselves sufficiently high boots of rawhide, which protect their legs from the cold water; the man who does not follow this advice will suffer much ill?health, especially when he reaches old age. On the other hand, some mines are so dry that they are entirely devoid of water, and this dryness causes the workmen even greater harm, for the dust which is stirred and beaten up by digging penetrates into the windpipe and lungs, and produces difficulty in breathing, and the disease which the Greeks call athsma. If the dust has corrosive qualities, it eats away the lungs, and implants consumption in the body; hence in the mines of the CarpathianMountains women are found who have married seven husbands, all of whom this terrible consumption has carried off to a premature death.

He defines the measures to be taken for each risk, as for examples what follows for the shafts :

..... The lagging is also fixed to the timbers, both to those which screen off the shaft on the ends from the vein, and to those which screen off the rest of the shaft from that part in which the ladders are placed. The lagging on the sides of the shaft confine the vein, so as to prevent fragments of it which have become loosened by water from dropping into the shaft and terrifying, or injuring, or knocking off the miners and other workmen who are going up or down the ladders from one part of the mine to another. For the same reason, the lagging between the ladders and the haulage?way on the other hand, confine and shut off from the ladders the fragments of rock which fall from the buckets or baskets while they are being drawn up; moreover, they make the arduous and difficult descent and ascent to appear less terrible, and in fact to be less dangerous.

Complementing the measures by procedures and standards as for example for rock fire blasting, shift organisation, water management, …

And in addition he emphasizes the responsibility of the management, but also the necessity for everyone to care about his own safety.

Further, sometimes workmen slipping from the ladders into the shafts break their arms, legs, or necks, or fall into the sumps and are drowned; often, indeed, the negligence of the foreman is to blame, for it is his special work both to fix the ladders so firmly to the timbers that they cannot break away, and to cover so securely with planks the sumps at the bottom of the shafts, that the planks cannot be moved nor the men fall into the water; wherefore the foreman must carefully execute his own work. Moreover, he must not set the entrance of the shaft?house toward the north wind, lest in winter the ladders freeze with cold, for when this happens the men's hands become stiff and slippery with cold, and cannot perform their office of holding. The men, too, must be careful that, even if none of these things happen, they do not fall through their own carelessness.

Even if these words are 500 years old they are still applicable to our time and for our activities, and the approach proposed then still valid and still to be applied as it shall be a continuous endeavour to ensure that the employees of the company can come to work without having risk to be injured. This is why we are confirming in a determined way our objectives for reducing the number of accidents for our employees and for our subcontractors, and implementing in a comprehensive way actions to identify the risks, mitigate them by hardware means and/or processes and procedures and by asking the management as well as all employees to feel responsible for them and for their colleagues. And if the former could seem easy to be done in an analytical way, the later, which is may be the more important, is clearly a state-of-mind which shall be developed throughout the organisation, and which need an exemplary behaviour from all of us.

Safety is our licence to lead.

 (1): The illustration is coming from the Latin edition of Basilae Helvet, published in 1621. The English translation has been done by Herbert Clark Hoover (who will be president of the USA) and Lou Henry Hoover, published in London in 1912 by The mining Magazine.

____________ Illustrations from the latin version _____________________________

Protection in the shaft

Now shafts, of whatever kind they may be, are supported in various ways. If the vein is hard, and also the hanging and footwall rock, the shaft does not require much timbering, but timbers are placed at intervals, one end of each of which is fixed in a hitch cut into the rock of the hanging wall and the other fixed into a hitch cut in the footwall. To these timbers are fixed small timbers along the footwall, to which are fastened the lagging and ladders. The lagging is also fixed to the timbers, both to those which screen off the shaft on the ends from the vein, and to those which screen off the rest of the shaft from that part in which the ladders are placed. The lagging on the sides of the shaft confine the vein, so as to prevent fragments of it which have become loosened by water from dropping into the shaft and terrifying, or injuring, or knocking off the miners and other workmen who are going up or down the ladders from one part of the mine to another. For the same reason, the lagging between the ladders and the haulage?way on the other hand, confine and shut off from the ladders the fragments of rock which fall from the buckets or baskets while they are being drawn up; moreover, they make the arduous and difficult descent and ascent to appear less terrible, and in fact to be less dangerous.

Ventilation

The third of this genus of machine is made of a pipe or pipes and a barrel. Above the uppermost pipe there is erected a wooden barrel, four feet high and three feet in diameter, bound with wooden hoops; it has a square blow?hole always open, which catches the breezes and guides them down either by a pipe into a conduit or by many pipes into the shaft. ... Around this fixed axle and the table on the pipe, the movable barrel is easily turned by a zephyr, or much more by a wind, which govern the wing on it. ... The wind, from whatever quarter of the world it blows, drives the wing straight toward the opposite direction, in which way the barrel turns the blow?hole towards the wind itself; the blow?hole receives the wind, and it is guided down into the shaft by means of the conduit or pipes.

Lung protection

... He is able to complete this work sometimes in eight hours, sometimes in ten, and again sometimes in twelve. In order that the heat of the fire should not burn his face, he covers it entirely with a cap, in which, however, there are holes through which he may see and breathe. 

Protection of the legs from the heat coming from the oven

Against the trestle, in front of the channel, there is placed an iron plate, lest the litharge, when it is extracted from the furnace, should splash the smelter' s shoes and injure his feet and legs. .. A: Furnace. B: Sticks . C: Litharge. D: Plate. E: The foreman when hungry eats butter, that the poison which the crucible exhales may not harm him, for this is a special remedy against that poison.

Protection of the hands and of the arms from hammer hazards

Putting the cakes under the hammer for breaking is done using a long claw to ensure that the hand and the arms are far away from the zone of danger.

Evacuation of the water from the mine sumps

The fifth kind of pump is still less simple, for it is composed of two or three pumps whose pistons are raised by a machine turned by men, for each piston?rod has a tappet which is raised, each in succession, by two cams on a barrel; two or four strong men turn it. When the pistons descend into the pipes their discs draw the water; when they are raised these force the water out through the pipes.

Mono purpose shafts to avoid accidents

Next to the shaft?house another house is built, where the mine foreman and the other workmen dwell, and in which are stored the ore and other things which are dug out. Although some persons build only one house, yet because sometimes boys and other living things fall into the shafts, most miners deliberately place one house apart from the other, or at least separate them by a wall.

When it is desired to suck out heavy or pestilential vapours, the blow?hole of the bellows is fitted all round the mouth of the conduit. Fixed to the upper bellows board is a lever which couples with another running downward from a little axle, into which it is mortised so that it may remain immovable; the iron journals of this little axle revolve in openings of upright posts; and so when the workman pulls down the lever the upper board of the bellows is raised, and at the same time the flap of the blow?hole is dragged open by the force of the wind. If the nozzle of the bellows is enclosed in the conduit it draws pure air into itself, but if its blow?hole is fitted all round the mouth of the conduit it exhausts the heavy and pestilential vapours out of the conduit and thus from the shaft, even if it is one hundred and twenty feet deep.

Rock fire blasting

While the heated veins and rock are giving forth a foetid vapour and the shafts or tunnels are emitting fumes, the miners and other workmen do not go down in the mines lest the stench affect their health or actually kill them, as I will explain in greater detail when I come to speak of the evils which affect miners. The Bergmeister, in order to prevent workmen from being suffocated, gives no one permission to break veins or rock by fire in shafts or tunnels where it is possible for the poisonous vapour and smoke to permeate the veins or stringers and pass through into the neighbouring mines, which have no hard veins or rock.