DEEP BREATHING

Series

Series Name: Mining Review 6th Year

Issue

Issue No.

Date Released

May 1953

Stories in this Issue:

Story

Story No. within this Issue

4 / 4

Summary

BFI synopsis: research on respiration problems and developing new and improved respiration gear for rescue men underground.
NCB Commentary - Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital is a centre of research as well as healing. A young doctor here is working on problems closely affecting miners and particularly recue men - the question of breathing.
Here in a small room packed with equipment, he is working out a pattern of the way men breathe, how much oxygen they need for a given job. He even has a machine to do the breathing for him: up and down it goes, day and night.
But much of the doctor’s work is down the pit. Rescue men volunteer to be his guinea pigs, to wear masks and carry on their backs measuring devices which count every breath they take. Underground, they carry out routine exercises, while from the meters on their backs the doctor calculates how much air they use on any given job.
Doing heavy work, such as building a sandbag barricade, the lungs need more air to keep the body going. The doctor carries out other tests as well. Here, he collects samples of the air breathed out by the men on the job. Back in the laboratory, he’ll analyse there to find out how much oxygen the men used up in their exertions.
There’s still a long way to go on this fundamental research, but the results may virtually affrect the design of special breathing gear for men underground.

Researcher Comments

Commentary recorded 7 April 1953.

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