One method of controlling shearer-generated dust on longwall faces is to confine the dust cloud to the face area and keep it away from face personnel as it travels downstream over the shearer body and beyond. Passive barriers can help this process by partitioning the airflow around the shearer into a clean split and a contaminated split. In addition, water sprays used as air movers (such as the shearer clearer developed on another U.S. Bureau of Mines contract) aid the air-partitioning process. A variety of passive barrier designs were developed and evaluated in the laboratory, tested in conjunction with the shearer clearer. The results showed that a headgate "splitter arm" to begin the air-splitting process is a vital part of a passive barrier system, whether or not a spray air- moving system is also used on the shearer. A simple gob-side passive barrier along the edge of the shearer was also shown to help partition the airflow. Underground evaluations were conducted on a combination passive barrier-spray air-moving system. The results confirmed the importance of the headgate splitter arm and showed that a gob-side barrier was very effective when used on shearers with ineffective external spray systems. The gob-side barrier was unnecessary, however, on shearers equipped with effective external air-moving systems such as the shearer clearer.