The miners work with a variety of tools including using tunnel boring machines and explosives to remove material for the project they are building.
[3] Warren Beatty was a rare exception in the 1950s, as a recently-arrived to New York individual, who worked as a Sandhog relatively briefly on the third tube of the Lincoln Tunnel.
[4] Sandhogs are subject to numerous occupational hazards; the construction of a water tunnel under New York City resulted in the deaths of 23 workers[5] and one child, who fell into an unsecured shaft,[6] over 46 years of excavation.
[7] Historically, work in pneumatic caissons underwater exposed workers to the risk of decompression sickness upon rapid emergence.
[8] In addition to risk of physical injury, sandhogs laboring alongside tunnel boring machines can experience respiratory damage due to dust exposure.