Visual Performance for Incandescent and Solid-State Cap Lamps in an Underground Mining Environment

Details

• Personal Author:
  Lutz T ; Sammarco, John J.
• Description:
  Miners depend most heavily on visual cues to recognize underground mining hazards; consequently, illumination plays a critical role in miners' safety. Some hazards are located in the miners' peripheral field-of-view (10 degrees to about 60 degrees off-axis) or on-axis (0 degrees). The objective of this research was to determine if there were visual performance improvements when using solid-state cap lamps with light emitting diodes (LEDs) as compared to incandescent light bulbs commonly used in miner cap lamps. Recent research has indicated that an increased short-wavelength content of the spectral power distribution of LEDs relative to incandescent lamps improves peripheral visual performance for low-light (mesopic) conditions. The visual performances of nine subjects were quantified by measuring the subjects' speed and accuracy in detecting floor objects located on axis and at +/-20 degrees off axis. The objects were located near field (1.83 meters) and far field (3.66 meters). Upon presentation of the objects, subjects would count and point to each object using a red-laser pointer. The object detection response time and number of missed objects were recorded. The results of the visual performance comparison for an LED, a prototype LED, and an incandescent cap lamp are presented. There were no missed objects when subjects used the LED-based cap lamps but, there were three missed object occurrences when subjects used the incandescent cap lamp. The mean detection time when using the incandescent cap lamp was 55.3% greater than the prototype LED cap lamp and 43.5% greater than the LED cap lamp. It can be inferred from this data that the spectral distribution of LED-based cap lamps could enable significant visual performance improvements as compared to incandescent cap lamps. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Eye Lighting Mining Occupational Health Safety Sense Organs
• Keywords:
  Light-source Lighting-systems Mining-equipment Mining-industry Underground-mining Visual-fields
• Series:
  Mining Publications
• ISBN:
  9781424412594
• ISSN:
  0197-2618
• Publisher:
  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  Louisiana ; New Jersey ; OSHA Region 2 ; OSHA Region 3 ; OSHA Region 6 ; Pennsylvania
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  PRL - Pittsburgh Research Laboratory
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20032704
• Citation:
  IAS '07: Conference Record of the 2007 IEEE Industry Applications Conference: Forty-second IAS Annual Meeting, September 23-27, 2007, New Orleans, Louisiana. Piscataway, NJ: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2007 Sep; 4:2090-2095
• Contact Point Address:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 626 Cochrans Mill Road, PO Box 18070, Pittsburgh, PA 15236
• Email:
  Jsammarco@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2007
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  IAS '07: Conference Record of the 2007 IEEE Industry Applications Conference: Forty-second IAS Annual Meeting, September 23-27, 2007, New Orleans, Louisiana
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:a52a40d03e759430c275bf7398cdf59c2a391f7e18eb3924363d8b08860418ba3043c8f65f2cfb474e6809a0b6dd1d1ccabdb0d0d3b9f30d0fd8f0caa5f9ab49
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/226834/cdc_226834_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 360.81 KB ]