Mine safety in coal mines, which in turn can initiate more extensive coal dust explosions. For this reason, rock dusts such as limestone dust are spread throughout coal mines to diminish the chances of coal dust explosions as well as to limit the extent of potential explosions, in a process known as rock dusting. Coal dust explosions can also begin independently of methane gas explosions. Frictional heat and sparks generated by mining equipment can ignite both methane gas and coal dust. For this reason, water is often used to cool rock-cutting sites. Miners utilize equipment strong enough to break through extremely hard
United Kingdom mines and quarries regulation in 1910 total increase of 924 in the number of persons employed. Fatal accidents resulted in 1900 in 127 deaths; compared with 1899 there was an increase of To in the number of deaths, and, as Professor Le Neve Foster pointed out, this exceeded the average death-rate of underground workers at mines under the Coal Mines Acts during the previous ten years, in spite of the quarrier " having nothing to fear from explosions of gas, underground fires or inundations." He attributed the difference to a lax observance of precautions which might in time be remedied by stringent administration of the law.