Improvement of Methods for Assessing the Exposure to Deep Underground Physical Factors: A Literature Review

Introduction: Mining is carried out at ever greater depths. However, there is little data on the influence of depthrelated physical factors. Heping Xie has proposed the notion of “deep underground medicine”, which studies human health effects of deep underground factors.
Objective: To examine deep underground physical factors and methods for assessing exposure by depth of the mine based on domestic and foreign sources.
Materials and methods: A literature search was conducted using relevant keywords in the PubMed search engines, in the Scopus, Web of Science, Medline, The Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Global Health, CyberLeninka, RCSI, and other databases. Prospective studies of working conditions and health status of workers in deep underground mines for 2000–2024 were included. Of 200 search results, 27 full-text articles were eligible for inclusion in the review. The articles discussing works on the surface of mines were discarded, аs well as review articles.
Results: A high risk of heat stress in miners that increases with the depth of the mine was revealed in the course of generalization and systematization of published data. The necessity of studying deep underground factors that can affect human health, including air temperature, heat generated within rocks, radiation, and air pressure is discussed. Methods for assessing exposure to physical factors and the need to improve them are demonstrated.
Conclusions: The necessity of improving methods for assessing exposures to deep underground physical factors is noted as the air and rock temperature, air humidity, and atmospheric pressure increase while the γ-radiation dose rate decreases with the depth. In order to prevent diseases caused by exposure to deep underground factors, a differentiated approach to depth-related preventive health measures is essential.

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