Haldanes Kanarienvogel

1896 · Canary as Gas Detector · Work 340 of 1,871

Haldanes Kanarienvogel, 1896, Canary as Gas Detector

A canary in a small wire cage carried by a rescue man at a British colliery, the bird on its perch beside a Haldane oxygen apparatus and a lamp at the pit bank.

What it was used for
After mine fires and explosions, rescue teams carried small caged birds as indicators of carbon monoxide. The reason was a measurement problem: in after-damp the lamp went out only at about 0.5 per cent carbon monoxide, while according to Haldane about 0.4 per cent was often fatal to rescuers. John Scott Haldane submitted his report to the Home Department in 1896 on the causes of death in colliery explosions and underground fires, with special reference to Tylorstown, Brancepeth and Micklefield, showing that most of the dead had died of carbon monoxide. The bird became an item of equipment in law: the Coal and Other Mines (Fire and Rescue) Order 1956 required cages of small birds at central rescue stations and two small birds at every mine with 100 or more employed below ground.
What was new
What was new was the idea of keeping the instrument alive. The reasoning is physiological: small warm-blooded animals show the effect sooner, and in 1991 the National Research Council, following US Bureau of Mines work of 1916, put it that birds and mice are much more sensitive to the gas than men, and that canaries are to be preferred to mice, sparrows or pigeons. Two things remain disputed. First, the bird: Haldane's 1896 report proposes a mouse or other small animal in a cage, not a bird; a press report of canaries used in a rescue dates from 21 December 1906. Second, the end. The often-quoted date of 30 December 1986 and the figure of more than 200 birds appear only in secondary accounts without sources; the 1956 bird provisions were revoked by the Escape and Rescue from Mines Regulations 1995, made 31 October 1995, in force 28 December 1995, and the Daily Mail reported the farewell in January 1996.

Further reading