Bezpieczeństwo Pracy i Ochrona Środowiska w Górnictwie Number 08/2018

Catastrophic events are intrinsic to brown coal open-pit mining, and they can have very severe impact on the safety of operations at a mining facility, or on the technical and economic effectiveness of mining. Their technical scale and economic effects depend primarily on the effectiveness of risk management focusing on their occurrence in a mining facility. To effectively counteract these threats, the potential and existing causes for these events must be identified and adequate measures must be taken: preventive, corrective - implemented in all working processes, and, ultimately, rescue measures. According to the author, catastrophic threats are mainly caused by the inconsistency of mining processes with objective and current conditions, in which they are carried out. Despite significant progress in the technique and technology of identifying and monitoring threats related to geological and mining conditions, and the application of IT tools in designing safe mining works, catastrophic events remain an essential threat. The article surveys years of practical vocational experience to classify and describe the sources and most important causes for catastrophic mine wall rockslides, and lays down the principles for preventing such threats. The article also presents a proposal for risk management with respect to these threats, basing on objective values, applying modern, innovative methods of designing and managing threats and monitoring the safety of mining processes.

The article presents a catalog of benefits due to an employee who has an occupational disease. The benefits can be divided into one-off, short-term and long-term ones. One-time benefits include one-off compensation for an employee due to permanent or long-term damage to health (or to the family of a worker due to his death), covering medical costs in the field of dentistry and immunization and supply of orthopedic items. Short-term benefits include sickness benefit from accident insurance, rehabilitation benefit and compensatory allowance. On the other hand, long-term benefits are a disability pension, a training pension, a survivor’s pension and a care allowance. Guarantees about benefits are wide, but it must be borne in mind that receiving each of the indicated benefits requires a medical certificate confirming the occupational disease, while their amount is usually unsufficient to cover the costs of treatment and rehabilitation.

The development of the mining industry is inseparably connected with social acceptance. The very knowledge of the fact that the present and future civilization is the civilization of resources is not sufficient in maintaining positive communication with the society. The Europe-wide MineLife - Życie z Górnictwem project implemented under the Poland-Saxony Interreg program is an example of the active cooperation of the Polish and Saxon mining supervision authorities and the Lower Silesian governments. On the Polish side, the project spans the Jelenia Góra sub-region in the Dolnośląskie Voivodeship and the Żary Poviat in the Zielona Góra sub-region in the Lubuskie Voivodeship. On the German side, The project spans the Görlitz and Bautzen poviats. The activities taken as part of the project aim to achieve a mutual understanding, develop competences and good practices in the form of a handbook used for solving conflict situations. Until now, a total of 5 study trips were organized (the “Sulików” Basalt Mine, reclaimed mine areas in the Łużyce Lakeland, the uranium mine in Kowary and the “Turów” and “Nochten” brown coal mines).