Grant Kirkby blogs that Australian and international mining and resource industries have a greater risk associated with the incidence of lightning injuring their workforce, inherently due to the large numbers of outdoor workers involved in these sectors, many of whom will be working in regions of higher ground flash density (GFD) and above average thunder-day (TD) activity. Lightning and High Voltage (HV) electrical discharge events present as a significant risk injury hazard to humans, primarily via a risk mechanism known as earth potential rise (EPR). In this paper lightning EPR in particular will be seen to be responsible for the vast majority of lightning injury statistics, yet up until this time there has been no suitable commercially available, portable EPR control that has catered to this risk.
This paper outlines some particularly relevant aspects surrounding the EPR risk, and presents a new and innovative product development by which higher risk operations can now significantly deal with, and mitigate this EPR risk. This new EPR mitigation control will be particularly useful to remote workgroups such as remote exploration camp workers, railway maintenance, and the like, who up until this point will have been precluded from any level of lightning risk mitigation, unlike their counterparts conducting activities at traditional mining and processing plant operations. Lightning is a well-known and catastrophic risk, to which the worldwide mining and resource industries have figured disproportionately and prominently within the recent fatality and injury statistics.
This is not difficult to understand considering mining and resource activities are typified by large numbers of people carrying on their normal workplace activities while working in proximity to large plant and equipment that inherently exhibits a higher disposition to being struck by lightning.
Original URL: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-study-new-innovation-lightning-safety-higher-risk-grant-kirkby
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