English:

Identifier: leadpoisoningins00hami (find matches)
Title: Lead poisoning in the smelting and refining of lead
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Hamilton, Alice, 1869-1970 Meeker, Royal, b. 1873
Subjects: Lead Lead industry and trade Hazardous occupations Lead Poisoning
Publisher: Washington, Govt. print. off.
Contributing Library: Columbia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons

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A bad feature of the Dwight-Lloyd machines is the grate cleaning. The charge sticks more or less closely to the grate and after the roasted mass has fallen off the bits which still adhere must be chipped off or the next charge will not stick. The dustiness of this work varies greatly just as the stickiness of the charge varies greatly. Usually the grate cleaner stands under the machine and works at the traveling belt of grates as it comes down to pass up again. He uses an air hammer to chip off the roasted ore. The accompanying illustration (plate 5) shows a man engaged in this work under conditions more favorable than sometimes obtain. Often he stands below and works at the grates as they come down over his head. In one of these buildings the cleaning is done by means of a long-handled rod which lets the man stand farther off, but the best arrangement is a mechanical cleaner attached to the grate. This was being tested in the East Helena plant and seemed to work admirably. Grate cleaning may be entirely done away with if the charge can be so made up as to fall off clean from the grate. In the Murray smelter they had succeeded in doing this and, at the time the plant was visited, they were not cleaning their grates at all. In other plants they sometimes try to prevent the charge sticking by first covering the grate with lime, and though this means very dusty grate cleaning the dust is of course not poisonous. However, when lime is added to the charge, the resulting cake is very brittle and that makes conditions at the discharge bad.
The next danger point is at the discharge. If the cake comes off clear and falls far down outside the building into a car where a spray of water plays on it, nobody is endangered. This arrangement is seen in several plants. But in others a man must be stationed at the grate to push the cake off and even at the car below to receive the cakes. The enormous evolution of sulphur fumes makes the discharge a very trying place to work, to say nothing of the really dangerous dust, and unfortunately the sulphur fumes and the dust are some

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PLATE 5.—BELT OF EMPTY GRATES OF A DWIGHT -LLOYD MACHINE.

The roasted cakes have dropped off and the man is chipping off the fragments which still stick to the grates. This is a very much better installation than many, and the man is not so much exposed to the dust as he would be were he standing below.