Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPRs) in Underground Mines

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR <SUBAGY>Mine Safety and Health Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>30 CFR Parts 57 and 75</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. MSHA-2025-0089]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1219-AC17</RIN> <SUBJECT>Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPRs) in Underground Mines</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Labor. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> MSHA is proposing to allow the use of non-permissible Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPRs) in specified underground areas of mines, if the equipment meets certain technical specifications and is operated under specific conditions. This proposed rule would codify technical specifications and working conditions to allow the use of non-permissible PAPRs in underground gassy mines. This proposed rule would reduce burden because mine operators would no longer need to submit a petition for modification to use non-permissible PAPRs. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before July 31, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> All submissions must include RIN 1219-AC17 or Docket No. MSHA-2025-0089. You should not include personal or proprietary information that you do not wish to disclose publicly. If you mark parts of a comment as “business confidential” information, MSHA will not post those parts of the comment. Otherwise, MSHA will post all comments without change, including any personal information provided. MSHA cautions against submitting personal information. You may submit comments and informational materials, clearly identified by RIN 1219-AC17 or Docket No. MSHA-2025-0089, by any of the following methods: 1. <E T="03">Federal E-Rulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments for MSHA-2025-0089. 2. <E T="03">Email: zzMSHA-comments@dol.gov.</E> Include “RIN 1219-AC17” in the subject line of the message. 3. <E T="03">Regular Mail or Hand Delivery:</E> MSHA, Office of Standards, Regulations, and Variances, Room C3522, 200 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20210. Before visiting MSHA in person, call 202-693-9440 to make an appointment. No telefacsimiles (“faxes”) will be accepted. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jessica D. Senk, Acting Director, Office of Standards, Regulations, and Variances, MSHA at 202-693-9440 (voice). This is not a toll-free number. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Approved Electrical Products</HD> PAPRs are electric, reusable respirators that protect against a variety of respirable contaminants when equipped with the appropriate filter, cartridge, or canister. PAPRs use a battery-powered fan to pull air through the attached filter, cartridge, or canister. The Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 (30 U.S.C. 801) (Mine Act) requires MSHA to establish requirements for the technical design, construction, and testing of electrical products, including PAPRs, that must be approved by MSHA prior to use in gassy mines. In underground gassy mines, flammable or explosive gases such as methane, and/or float coal dust can form explosive mixtures when combined with air. Before PAPRs can be used in gassy mines in the U.S., they must first be approved by MSHA. MSHA's requirements in title 30, Code of Federal Regulations (30 CFR) part 18 ensure electric motor-driven products are designed and manufactured so that they will not emit a spark strong enough, or temperature sufficient to cause a fire or explosion. Those seeking MSHA approval (applicants) are typically product designers and manufacturers of electrical products such as PAPRs. MSHA's approval process includes testing and evaluating the electrical product to determine whether it performs according to certain technical and safety requirements. MSHA issues an approval if the electrical product passes all the tests and evaluations. Once the electrical product is approved by MSHA, it must display an MSHA approval marking indicating that the product is approved for use in gassy mines. MSHA refers to electrical products approved for use in gassy areas of mines as “permissible.” To continue to use the MSHA approval marking, the approval holder must maintain the quality of the electrical product according to the technical requirements upon which its approval was based. Currently, there are no permissible PAPRs commercially available in the U.S. market. Mine operators must seek MSHA approval for the use of PAPRs in underground mines by filing petitions for modification under 30 CFR part 44. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Petitions for Modification</HD> Section 101(c) of the Mine Act allows mine operators or representatives of miners to file a petition, or request, to modify the application of any mandatory safety standard to a mine. MSHA reviews petitions for modification to determine whether the petitioner's alternative method of achieving the result of the standard will at all times guarantee no less than the same measure of protection afforded by the standard, or the application of the standard will result in a diminution of safety to the miners. 30 CFR part 44 establishes the procedures and rules of practice for filing a petition for modification under section 101(c) of the Mine Act. Once a petition has been filed by a mine operator or representative of miners, a notice requesting comment on the petition is published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and MSHA personnel investigate to promptly determine whether to grant or deny the petition. Taking into consideration the alternative methods proposed by the petitioner and any additional requirements, MSHA will grant the petition for modification if the Agency determines that the alternative method of achieving the result of the standard will at all times guarantee no less than the same measure of protection afforded by the standard, or the application of the standard will result in a diminution of safety to the miners. The granted modification, together with any conditions, will have the same effect as a mandatory safety standard. Since 2021, MSHA has received more than 150 petitions for modification requesting MSHA allow the use of non-permissible PAPRs in areas of underground mines where the use of approved equipment is required. These petitions for modification generally propose very similar alternative methods, or conditions and terms, for the safe use of non-permissible PAPRs in gassy areas of underground mines to ensure that miners are at all times afforded the same measure of protection as when using permissible equipment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Discussion</HD> MSHA proposes to codify certain technical specifications and working conditions to allow the use of PAPRs in specified underground areas of underground metal and nonmetal (MNM) and coal mines, so that mine operators no longer need to file petitions for modification. This proposed rule would allow mine operators to safely use the best and most current technology available, while not reducing miner safety. This proposed rule would not revise the language of any Proposed Decisions and Orders granted by MSHA for PAPRs. Operators with granted petitions would decide between complying with the terms of their Proposed Decision and Order or complying with the requirements proposed in this rule and dismissing their petitions. Under the proposed rule, there would be no change to existing ventilation requirements, methane monitoring requirements, de-energization requirements, or rock-dusting requirements. The Agency has preliminarily determined that this proposed rule, including the protective requirements that are generally consistent with the terms in granted petitions, would not reduce existing protections for miners. MSHA seeks comments on any aspects of this proposed rule, including what records are appropriate for mine operators to maintain to ensure compliance. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Section-by-Section Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Sections 57.22316 and 75.530—Non-Permissible Powered Air-Purifying Respirators (PAPRs): Purpose and Scope</HD> This proposed rule would allow non-permissible PAPRs that have not been evaluated and approved by MSHA using the 30 CFR part 18 requirements to be used in specified underground areas of gassy mines. The proposed rule would also establish requirements for the features and maintenance of non-permissible PAPRs and the mining conditions where non-permissible PAPRs can be used. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Sections 57.22316-1 and 75.531—Non-Permissible PAPRs: Definitions</HD> The proposed rule would define <E T="03">commercially available, Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPRs),</E> <E T="03">production activities,</E> and <E T="03">specified underground areas</E> for MNM mines in part 57 and coal mines in part 75. The definitions for <E T="03">commercially available</E> and <E T="03">Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPRs)</E> are the same in parts 57 and 75. However, the definitions for <E T="03">production activities</E> and <E T="03">specified underground area</E> are different in parts 57 and 75 because of differences in the commodities mined, mining methods, geology, and construction of MNM mines compared to coal mines. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Sections 57.22316-2 and 75.532—Non-Permissible PAPRs: Approval and Certification Requirements</HD> Proposed §§ 57.22316-2 and 75.532 would require that non-permissible PAPRs taken into specified underground areas meet certain conditions. Non-permissible PAPRs must meet the appropriate UL (formerly Underwriters Laboratories) voluntary consensus safety standard. Proposed paragraphs §§ 57.22316-2(a)(2) and 75.532(a)(2) would require non-permissible PAPRs to be ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 89k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━