Pollution due to particulate matter from mining activities

Sneha Gautam; Basanta Kumar Prusty; Aditya Kumar Patra

doi:10.30544/RSD22

Authors

Sneha Gautam Department of Mining Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India Author
Basanta Kumar Prusty Department of Mining Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India Author
Aditya Kumar Patra Department of Mining Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30544/RSD22

Keywords:

air pollution, particulate matter, opencast mines, modelling, health effects

Abstract

This paper focuses on generation and dispersion of particulate matter (PM) during mining operations. The paper starts with a brief introduction to health effects of PM and effect of different size of PM on respiratory system of human being. Surface mines, due to their very nature of exposure to ambient atmosphere, release PM directly to the atmosphere. The dust particle sizes of interest from health point view are PM2.5 & PM10 which can penetrate to the deeper parts of the respiratory system. Several earlier studies have indicated that the pollution due to PM is very high in working areas of opencast mines. Along with the quantity of PM generated, the nature of dispersion plays an important role as far as human exposure to particulate matter is concerned. Therefore, it is needed to carry out studies to measure and understand the nature of dispersion of PM from open cast mines.

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