Abstract: The mining of Open-pit coal mine will create large amounts of dust because of its special production processes, such as blasting, transportation, loading and unloading, etc. It not only causes serious pollution to the environment, but also restricts the development of coal mining enterprises. At first, this paper introduced the origin and classification of opencast coal mine dust, explaining the influence of dust in open pit coal mining on environment from the aspects of human, plant and soil. Then this paper focused on introducing the field survey method, numerical simulation method and hyperspectral remote sensing method in the dust diffusion detection method. From two aspects of coal dust characteristics and meteorological factors, the further study acquired the dust diffusion detection method and the law of the dust migration and diffusion. Finally, in order to provide convincing technical and theoretical support for the dust control in the open pit coal mine, the future research directions are prospected.