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See the exposure as it happens — not three days later in a lab report.

Dust, gas, diesel particulate, noise and heat do their damage over a career, and a spot sample read days later protects no one in the moment. addanode delivers continuous, real-time occupational hygiene monitoring — alerts before a limit is breached, and a defensible, unbroken record for MHSA compliance and medical surveillance.

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What we monitor

The exposures that matter, continuously.

Dust & DPM

Respirable dust (silica, coal) and diesel particulate matter — the drivers of occupational lung disease in confined workings.

Gases

Carbon monoxide, methane, oxides of nitrogen and oxygen deficiency, by commodity and method.

Noise & heat

Noise from drilling, crushing and ventilation, and heat-stress in deep, hot workings — both immediate and cumulative risks.

Why real-time

From documenting exposure to preventing it.

  • Act before the limit is breached — live readings trigger ventilation, sprays or withdrawal before an exposure limit is exceeded, not next week.
  • Catch the peaks — a short, severe spike does the damage; continuous data sees what spot samples miss between visits.
  • Find the sources — time- and place-stamped data shows which activity or area drives exposure, so controls target the real cause.
  • Verify your controls — measure before and after a ventilation or spray change and prove it reduced exposure.
  • Build a defensible record — continuous data for MHSA compliance, Section 11 risk assessments and medical surveillance, on the addaNet platform alongside collision prevention and person location.

It supports your hygienist, it doesn't replace them. Continuous monitoring widens coverage and catches peaks between formal sampling campaigns; your occupational hygienist still sets the strategy and signs off compliance.

Always confirm current occupational exposure limits and obligations against the latest Mine Health and Safety Act, its regulations and your appointed occupational hygienist.

From a reading to a control — the loop that makes monitoring protective A continuous reading crosses a threshold agreed in advance, which triggers a named action in ventilation, method or PPE; the area is re-measured to confirm the control worked, and the record is what stands up afterwards. A reading continuous, not a spot sample A threshold agreed in advance A named action ventilation, method or PPE Re-measure did the control work The record what stands up later An alarm with no named action is the step most often missing — and the one that teaches people to ignore alarms.
From a reading to a control A continuous reading crosses a threshold agreed in advance, triggers a named action, the area is re-measured, and the record is what stands up afterwards. A reading continuous, not a spot sample A threshold agreed in advance A named action ventilation, method or PPE Re-measure did the control work The record what stands up later
The loop that turns a reading into protection. The step most often missing is the named action — and an alarm that nobody is required to act on does not merely fail once, it teaches the section that alarms are background noise.

Where exposure monitoring produces numbers instead of protection.

Continuous monitoring supports a hygienist; it can also produce a confident record of the wrong thing. These are the failures we design against, and each has a straightforward remedy.

What goes wrongHow you noticeThe fix
Instrument placed where it is easy to serviceReadings look acceptable while people do notMeasure at the breathing zone of the task. A sensor on a wall near the door describes the door
Calibration and bump-testing kept informallyThe data is questioned exactly when it mattersKeep the calibration record with the data. An uncalibrated instrument produces numbers, not evidence
Alarms with no defined responsePeople acknowledge the alarm and carry onGive every alarm level a named action. An alarm nobody is required to act on trains everyone to ignore alarms
Averaging that hides the peaksThe shift average is compliant and the exposure is notReport peak and duration alongside the average — dose is the area under the curve, not the mean
Cross-sensitivity ignoredA gas reading tracks something else entirelyKnow the interferences of the sensor type before you act on a trend, especially where diesel and blasting products share a sensor
Wrong dust fractionContinuous numbers do not reconcile with gravimetric resultsMatch the size fraction to the standard your hygienist reports against, or the two records will never agree
Ventilation changes not recordedExposure trends move for no visible reasonLog fan and ventilation changes with the exposure data; most unexplained trends turn out to be air, not source
Area data used as personal exposureIndividual claims rest on a fixed instrumentKeep area and personal monitoring distinct. They answer different questions and are not substitutes

The two that most often undo a programme are placement and the undefined alarm. Placement decides whether the record describes a person or a room, and it is settled in an afternoon at the start rather than argued about later. The undefined alarm is the slower failure: each unactioned alert teaches the section that alerts are background noise, and that habit outlasts whichever instrument produced it.

What to insist on when you specify it.

Exposure instruments are easy to compare on range and price and hard to compare on whether the record will stand up. These are the points that decide the difference.

  • Resolution at the levels that matter — not at full scale. An instrument that reads well at high concentration may be useless around the limit you actually manage to
  • A calibration interval, and who performs it — written into the contract, with the record stored beside the data rather than in a separate file nobody produces on request
  • Known cross-sensitivities declared — for the gases present in your operation, so that a trend can be interpreted rather than argued about
  • The dust fraction matched to your reporting standard — so continuous data and gravimetric results describe the same thing
  • An alarm-to-action table — every level mapped to a named response. Without it, alarms become background and the record shows only that people acknowledged them
  • Integration with the sampling programme — continuous monitoring widens coverage between campaigns; specify how the two records are read together, and by whom
Frequently asked

Occupational-hygiene questions.

For the full picture — fixed, mobile and personal monitoring — see our occupational-hygiene guide.

A spot sample captures one place at one moment, read days later — it can't warn anyone in real time and misses the short, severe peaks that do the damage. Continuous monitoring sees exposures as they happen, lets you act before a limit is breached, and builds a defensible record.
No — it complements them. Continuous area and personal monitoring give live coverage and catch peaks between sampling campaigns, while your hygienist interprets the data, sets strategy and signs off compliance. The technology widens coverage; professional judgement still governs.
Start with your highest-risk hazard in your highest-risk section — guided by your risk assessments and medical-surveillance trends, often respirable silica, DPM or heat. Prove the value there with alarms tied to a real response, then expand.
The MHSA regime requires mines to assess and control gas hazards appropriate to the workings — flammable gas (methane), carbon monoxide and oxygen deficiency being the core set, with diesel particulate and others per the mine's risk assessment. Suppliers provide the intrinsically safe detectors; our role is the layer above: getting every reading into one live system with alerts, trends and exposure records, rather than instrument-by-instrument readings on clipboards.

Want to see exposures as they happen?

Tell us your priority hazard and toughest section. We'll deploy real-time monitoring where the risk is highest — with alarms tied to a response and a record that stands up to scrutiny.

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