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According to the August 31 alert distributed to the industry via its website, the agency said CSE was investigating the potential that the units’ breathing bag may not receive the optimum amount of necessary oxygen to fully inflate when started via the oxygen cylinder.

The issue was discovered through the company’s quality control program. It noted that the possible issue with the component involved a shipment of oxygen cylinders from its supplier.

“Until the root cause is determined and corrected, CSE Corporation is temporarily suspending sales of the SR-100 SCSRs,” MSHA officials said in the Procedure Instruction Letter, or PIL.

“Mining companies utilizing these units may need to make adjustments to provide miners with the required number of SCSRs to comply with 30 CFR Part 57 and 75.

“Purchasing units from a different manufacturer to meet the required number of SCSRs is acceptable provided all miners have received required training on the new units.”

CSE did not release a public statement on the matter Tuesday, and a request for comment was not returned by press time.

The agency said that if all SCSR developers exhaust inventory and operations are unable to obtain the adequate number of supplies, MSHA would accept purchase orders with a 60-day confirmed delivery date.

“While waiting on delivery of SCSRs, MSHA coal personnel will ensure that workers on coal mining sections are provided with the required number of units borrowed from SCSR caches located the farthest outby from the working sections.”

Federal inspectors are being instructed to ensure operations that currently use CSE’s SR-100 units are aware that users should obtain another SCSR if the oxygen cylinder on their unit fails to deploy. If no others are available, workers should follow the procedure for manual start.