The mask or the utopia of the healthy mine. Socio-technical controversies around the dust mask at the twilight of the coal industry (1930s-1980s)

During the last phase of the coal industry, the face mask was conceived, perceived and presented as a useful device to protect workers against the effects of dust, in an uncertain context marked by the silicosis epidemic from the inter-war years until the turn of the 1980s. A remedy for the proven unsanitary of the galleries, this object was part of a technical and productive utopia: the healthy mine. Wearing a mask then made it acceptable to continue mining, particularly in the dustiest places. This article analyses the process by which engineers, doctors and operators in France took up the issue of masks in order to build the utopia of the healthy mine. Investigating the socio-technical controversies associated with this device attached to the worker’s body raises questions about the management of the workforce in a polluted environment and about the imaginaries of the modernization of a coal mining industry running out of steam.