Abstract
The U.S. Bureau of Mines established, on August 15, 1983, the Generic Mineral Technology Center for respirable dust within the Mining and Mineral Resources Institutes (MRI's) at the Pennsylvania State University and West Virginia University in association with participating MRI's at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Minnesota, and later Michigan Technological University. Penn State serves as the administrative unit for the center. Funding, to date, is more than $11 million. The Center's research program has been developed with recognition of the stated objective of the federal mine safety and health laws, which is to ". . . Permit each miner the opportunity to work underground during the period of his or her entire adult working life without incurring any disability from pneumoconioses or any other occupation-related disease. . . ." The center's program is designed to permit an accelerated attack on the fundamental research problems for the control of respirable dust in mines. This report was a response to the 1988 questionnaire prepared by mri for submission to the advisory committee on mining and mineral resources research.
