TIRE SAFETY POINTS

A tire and rim safety training program should be provided to all personnel working on or around tires and rims.
No employee should service any rim wheel unless he or she has been trained and instructed in the correct procedures of servicing the type of wheel being worked on.
Personnel working on a tire and/or rim should be competent in the tasks of demounting tires,
inspecting and identifying rim wheel components, mounting of tires, using restraining devices,
handling rim wheels, inflating a tire when a single piece rim wheel is mounted on a vehicle, and installing and removing rim wheels.

Assembled tires should not be welded or cut.
Even a tire that has been deflated can explode under certain conditions. Heat may cause
decomposition of a section of the tire carcass or rubber liner and generate explosive mixtures of gases within the tire. Heat sources include welding, fire, dragging brakes or excessive brake use, and electrical arcing. Ignition of the gases may then occur resulting in a violent explosion and injury to miners. Tire assemblies should therefore never be welded, brazed, or cut. Purging the air from the tire and then inflating the tire with an inert gas or with nitrogen or carbon dioxide in an attempt to remove all the oxygen does not ensure that a chemical explosion will not occur. Because of the complexity of the chemical compositions making up the tire, it is never certain which gases would be evolved and form an explosive mixture. The safest procedure is to never apply heat to any rim or rim/hub assembly that has an inflated or deflated tire mounted on it.
If a tire has been on fire, or been exposed to another source of heat, deflating the tire does not
immediately eliminate the potential danger of a tire explosion. Chemical reactions, and thus the danger of explosion, can continue for some time after a fire has been extinguished or the heat source removed.
Personnel should always stand outside the area of trajectory both during inflation of the tire and during the inspection of the rim wheel following inflation.
Restraining devices should be used while inflating tires on multipiece wheels. A miner should
also use a restraining device or barrier while inflating tires on single piece wheels unless the rim wheel is bolted onto the vehicle during inflation. Restraining devices and barriers should be capable of preventing rim wheel components from being thrown outside or beyond the device or barrier.

Restraining devices and barriers should be visually inspected prior to use and after any separation of the rim wheel components or sudden release of contained air.
Any restraining device or barrier exhibiting damage, such as cracks at welds; cracked or broken components; bent or sprung components caused by mishandling, abuse, tire explosion, or rim wheel separation; and pitting of components due to corrosion, should be removed from service.

An air line assembly consisting of the following components should be used to inflate tires:
clip-on chuck; in-line valve with a pressure gauge or a regulator that can be preset; and a
sufficient length of hose between the clip-on chuck and the in-line valve to allow the miner to
stand outside the trajectory. Only tools recommended in the rim manual for the type of wheel being serviced should be used. All multipiece wheel components and single piece wheels should be inspected prior to assembly.

Any component that is bent, pitted from corrosion, broken, or cracked should not be used and
should be marked or tagged unserviceable.
Rim flanges, rim gutters, rings, bead seating surfaces, and the bead areas of tires should be free of any dirt, surface rust, or loose or flaked rubber build-up prior to mounting and inflation. The size and type of both the tire and the wheel should be checked for compatibility prior to assembly of the rim wheel.