Conveyor safety in mining industry

Conveyors are essential equipment in our industry to transport materials efficiently across long distances. While they offer significant operational benefits, conveyors also pose various safety risks. Ensuring the safety of miners around conveyors is paramount to prevent accidents and maintain a productive work environment. Entanglement and crushing hazards around conveyors present fatal risks to employees including frontline miners, engineers and leaders. It is important that we implement effective controls to protect miners from these fatal risks when operating, repairing or even studying conveyors. Other risks that are present around conveyors that may not have such catastrophic consequences include material spillage, noise, silica exposure and vibration that could cause musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). When talking about conveyor safety, it is important that we look at our systems holistically, as a small change in one place can cause untended results in another. The first and foremost considerations around conveyor safety can be found in most countries’ mining safety regulations. Making sure that we have protections along the conveyor to stop the belt if a person should fall into the conveyor or have proper guarding along the length of a belt where miners could be walking and around the conveyor pulleys are two of the basics of conveyor safety. These controls need to be inspected, maintained and tested regularly to ensure effectiveness. Frontline miners operating conveyors are essential to our operations. We need to make sure that we adequately train our conveyor operators to protect themselves and the operation. Training operators on how to recognize hazards to themselves and the system is the first step in mitigating hazards. An astute operator can help identify problem rollers that could lead to failure, and potentially fires that could severely impact operations. Loose clothing/equipment and long hair present entanglement hazards that may not be obvious to operators. Recognizing entanglement hazards whether worn or used (tools) is the first step in minimizing the risk of entanglement. When performing cleanup along belts, material should only be put back onto the belt if it is shut down. Shoveling onto belts can create entanglement hazards if the shovel becomes entangled. Many conveyor belts operate at speeds where a standard shovel and body parts could become entangled between the belt and idlers before a miner can let go. Preventing spillage along belts will minimize the need for cleanup and will be discussed more when we discuss conveyor maintenance. Enclosed conveyor galleries can have elevated dust emissions that can harm our miners. The importance of educating our miners on proper respiratory protection cannot be understated. Operators can, and do, provide varying respiratory protection devices, but it is up to our miners to properly use the safety equipment supplied. Frequent leadership visits and conversations with miners in the field can help validate the importance of wearing your personal protective gear. I think we can all agree that it would be great if conveyors could be running all the time; however, we know that all mechanical systems need down time. So, we need to also consider those critical controls to put in place when conveyors are shut down. One of the most important controls is warning signals with delays to warn miners that a conveyor belt is about to start. The maintenance of our conveyor belts ensure the systems will continue to operate efficiently and can also help minimize health and safety risks. Proper inspection and maintenance of our conveyor belts can reduce spillage along the belt lines that can cause trip/slip/fall hazards as well as the need for operators to perform cleanup along the belt lines. When conveyors operate as designed, vibrations that can cause dust to become airborne is also minimized. When performing maintenance on conveyor belts, the most important control that each miner must understand is that they need to “lockout, tagout and tryout” the belt to make sure it cannot start when exposed to crushing and entanglement hazards. This is more than just “hanging a lock”; we cannot forget the “tryout” piece. Recognizing hazards created by gravity during our maintenance jobs must always be considered, including the material load that may be on the belt. The use of belt clamps or other blocking devices may be required to safely perform the work. Good housekeeping practices before, during and after maintenance activities also help to minimize risk of injury around conveyor belts. Putting procedures in place Recognizing all the hazards present for maintenance jobs and implementing effective controls can seem like a daunting task. Having effective conveyor maintenance and operating procedures in place can help reduce the potential for human error around conveyors. I encourage all readers to establish formal programs that focus on the health and safety risks of conveyor belts used in mining operations. There are several resources that can help build these programs including regulatory requirements, vendor manuals, voluntary consensus standards (ASME), academic publications and my favorite: the SME Mine Safety & Health Handbook. Leverage the power of the SME by building networks through events like the MINEXCHANGE 2026 SME Conference & Expo in Salt Lake City, UT to collaborate on industry best practices to eliminate high-risk incidents that can cause serious injuries or fatalities. n

Conveyor safety in mining industry

Authored by: Matt Main

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