9 Environmental Geoscience (Posters)

Monday, 18 March 2013
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Grand Ballroom South

INVESTIGATION OF THE COMPOSITION AND ORIGIN OF FUGITIVE DUST IN LATTIMER MINES, PENNSYLVANIA

Paper number: 9-8
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Authors

Abstract

In June, 2012, residents of Lattimer Mines, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania began to issue complaints to local and state officials about anomalous amounts of dust around their homes and yards. The residents suspected that the fugitive dust originated from a mining site owned and operated by Glenn O. Hawbaker Company. The mining operation is actively quarrying the Llewellyn Formation (carbonaceous sandstone to shale in repetitive sequences with anthracite coal) and has recently introduced a rock crusher on their premises.

The goal was to collect and analyze dust samples from the residences and rock samples near the quarry to compare their chemical composition. In September, 2012, dust samples were collected with double-sided carbon adhesive tape affixed to an aluminum specimen mount. In the lab, fragments of Llewellyn Formation rock samples were prepared on a specimen mount in the same manner. The dust and rock specimen mounts were analyzed using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) with Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) Spectrometer. A total of 160 dust and ten Llewellyn Formation rock analyses were performed. The dust samples showed a similar chemical composition to that of the Llewellyn Formation carbonaceous shale with comparable ranges in Si, Al, Mg, C, and S.