English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

On 3 May 1911, Mr Enoch Edwards MP (member of parliament for Hanley) enquired what arrangements were being made to continue experiments with coal dusts that had previously been funded by coal owners and others at Altofts colliery in West Riding. In response, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr Winston Spencer Churchill, replied, ‘This matter has been receiving the careful consideration of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and myself, and I am glad now to be able to state that it has been decided to continue these experiments under the supervision of the Home Office, and that the Treasury have sanctioned the considerable expenditure that will be necessary for the purpose’ [1]. With these words, Winston Churchill established the Home Office Experimental Station at Eskmeals in Cumberland, the organization now known as the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL), and transferred the funding of research into the safety of coal mines from the private to the public sector. At that time, a number of underpinning principles were established that have stood the test of time. Specifically, the research station was established as a national asset for the UK; the focus was on the development of practical solutions to workplace health and safety problems; that these problems were best solved by multidisciplinary teams and that the knowledge generated should be transferred to those who need it. One hundred years later, those principals still hold good, even though the organization and the world in which it operates has significantly changed. At the time of HSL’s foundation, 1000 people died every year as a result of underground accidents in coal mines [2], and many more died as a result of the health consequences of working with coal. In those early days, the majority of the work carried out by the laboratory centred on coal dust explosions, but the effects of coal and other dust exposures on health were also considered. Indeed, in the very first report of the Explosions in Mines Committee (under whose auspices the experimental work was performed), they presented work by Dr Beattie from Sheffield University regarding the potential health consequences that could arise from the addition of stone and other incombustible dusts to the miners’ working environment to prevent explosions [3]. The first Director of the new government-funded facility was Dr R. V. Wheeler, who worked closely with Dr Marie Stopes on the physical and chemical properties of coal. In 1918, they published a monograph entitled ‘The Constitution of Coal’, published in 1918 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research [4]. It was a comprehensive review of the subject and indicated many areas for future advance. Around this time, Dr Wheeler wrote to Marie Stopes saying, ‘I received a slight thrill reading that you have dissolved coal’. She responded by sending him a copy of her book on ‘Married Love’ also published in 1918 [5]. Over the years, HSL has evolved as its operating context changed, be it political, social or economic. The first major change came in 1920, when it was agreed that the facilities in Eskmeals had deteriorated as a result of the First World War, while problems in the industry had steadily accumulated which required urgent solutions. A new location was sought, and a new body, The Safety in Mines Research Board, was appointed to oversee the development of a new research facility. Part of the specification included the requirement that the site ‘must not be near any working coal mine’, so as not to alarm local residents when experimental explosions were undertaken. In January 1924, a site near Buxton was identified and £500 000 ( £16.4M today) was provided to establish the facility. The official opening of the site by The Viscount Chelmsford (Chairman of the Miner’s Welfare Committee) took place in June 1927. The Buxton site focused on large-scale experimental explosions of coal dust and firedamp, experiments with gob fires and mining explosives and other work, which, as the programme to commemorate the opening event stated, ‘owing to its character can only be conducted in a position of comparative isolation’. A further site was opened in Sheffield in 1928 by the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, which undertook work on the constitution of coal, the safe use of electricity in mines and on the improvement of the miners’ safety lamp. Staff from the two sites worked as one unit, and the broad range of disciplines meant that more complex problems could be investigated. Indeed, it was recorded in a report describing the research activities undertaken, that, ‘The work of research now is less often within the capacity of one man than it was when Davy invented a safety lamp after a few weeks’ work’ [6]. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the work in both the Sheffield and Buxton facilities became more sophisticated and included increasing work on health-related issues. As a consequence, the international reputation of the facility grew, and in 1931, the First International Conference of Safety in Mines Research Institute was held at the Buxton facility; this conference continues to this day, and the international mining community will celebrate the 80th anniversary of this prestigious global conference in India in 2011. During the 1930s, the Buxton site also hosted

Enabling a better working Britain: celebrating the centenary of the Health and Safety Laboratory