Working in a Dusty Environment : Investigating the Work Environment Management of Dust at LKAB

A common exposure in the working life is the exposure to respirable dust. Long exposure of respirable dust can lead to lung diseases such as silicosis, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The Swedish mining company, LKAB have worksites both above and below ground where there is risk of exposure to respirable dust. The purpose of this project is to analyze their current work environment management of respirable dust and to suggest improvements. The current state at LKAB was mapped by viewing internal documents, observations at different worksites above ground, and various interviews. Two sorting plants were studied further through interviews with both employers and employees. The results were analyzed in order to identify improvement areas and formulate requirements for the future solutions. Different concepts were formulated from ideas suggested in interviews, theory and creative methods. The concepts were analyzed by discussing their benefits and disadvantages. Two final concepts were developed from the ideation phase and evaluated by comparing to the specification of requirements. The mapping of the current state showed that LKAB is in a transition phase between their old strategy and a new. This transition has led to some confusion as the new strategy is only generally formulated and therefore not directly applicable. Furthermore, almost all participants in the employee interviews stated that they had received little or no information about the risks of inhaling respirable dust. By analyzing the results three improvement areas were identified: the overall strategy, information and communication, and the safety culture. In the ideation phase, improvement suggestions were formulated in order to satisfy these areas. In order to satisfy all the requirements in the formulated specification of requirements, several improvement suggestions were combined.The developed final concept consists of two main parts: a general strategy for the work environment management, and three different ways of informing. The first part concretizes and summarizes a suggestion of a new general strategy for work environment management of dust by using a roadmap. The second part of the final concept focuses on information. Three different interconnected strategies for information is therefore suggested, in order to increase the risk perception among the employees exposed to dust. These strategies consist of designing an education, installing a notice board and marking possible risky areas with decree signs. Furthermore, LKAB is recommended to develop a new strategy for their occupational exposure measurements and that they start measure the levels of inhalable dust as well.Validerat; 20160616 (global_studentproject_submitter