Koppe told a seminar on mechanical safety underground that mechanical engineers were on the front line of gas detection and needed more information to be able to help identify potential sources of risk.

“You, as the person involved with mechanical plant, have the most reportables involving gas ignition potential,” he said.

“You also have the most potential ignition sources, which are currently not reportable.”

The information resulting from current legislated reporting requirements was incomplete, inadequately detailed, and may not be suitable for analysis, he said.

It was also not very suitable for trend analysis, not consistently interpreted by the mines, not risk ranked and needed to be further researched before management discussions on the need for action could be determined.

Koppe said widening the reporting requirements would encourage test work to identify if a heat source was capable of igniting methane.

While this would lead to an increase in the reportables initially the number of sources reportable would reduce.

“This would include burnt diesel exhaust filters, any steel which has changed colour from heat, any paint which has blistered,” he said.

“All sparking external to explosion-protected equipment is reportable unless the sparking has been proven to be incapable of igniting an appropriate margin of safety gas.”

Koppe said it was time the industry stopped accepting explosion potential tests which had been conducted in methane under limited controlled laboratory tests.