- Hydropower is proving to be a practical and user friendly source of deep level mining and it contributes to an improvement in the safety and health aspect of deep level underground mining of narrow tabular ore bodies.
- An extremely important contribution of hydropower towards safety and health is its potential to reduce hazardous noise in the work place to acceptable levels. This must be considered as a major breakthrough in the hearing conservation programmes currently being applied.
- Secondly is the cooling potential of the hydropowered equipment to create an acceptable micro climate within the stope where very high virgin rock temperatures occur.
- Thirdly a very important improvement is achieved in reducing the risk of exposure to toxic dust such as silica at the working face due to the use of water.
- Exhaust air from pneumatic rock drills contains oil vapours which is not environmentally favourable. Also the presence of oil in the stope adds another dimension to the safety and health aspect due to slippery footwall conditions. The oil vapour also causes contamination of the ore bearing rock which could have an adverse effect in the process plant.
- Compared to pneumatic drilling, hydropower drilling has improved visibility due to the absence of dense fog associated with compressed air caused by the condensation of the humid air when brought in contact with the exhaust air from an air drill.
- Due to the high efficiency of the powerful hydropower rock drill over pneumatic and electric drilling, the time spent on the face by the rock drill crew is reduced which limits the exposure of personnel to extended periods in the high risk zone.
