Assessment of Ambient Air Quality at Joda Iron Ore Mines, Jharkhand (India)

Abstract

Opencast mining is the major source of air pollution in respect of fines and dust. Maintenance of energy demand, opencast mining is required at a phenomenal rate. The natural resources like land, water, air are heavily affected by exploration, excavation and mineral processes. The use of explosives creates airborne pressure variations (air blast). Particulate matter (Dust) of various sizes, gas is the major air pollutant from mining. The study aimed to assess the impact of mining and mining processes on ambient air quality in Joda iron ore mines, which comes under OMQ Noamundi, TATA Steel Ltd., West Singhbhum, and Jharkhand covering an area of 6.708 sq. km. It is a mechanized open cast mine, and its production capacity is 6.00 million tons per annum. Samples were collected from four sampling points by residential and sensitive zone to analyse the PM10, PM2.5, SPM, SO2, and NOX on 24 hourly bases twice in a week. The concentration of PM10, PM2.5, SPM, SO2 and NOX varies between 59.0-27.0 μg/m3, 39.0-9.5 μg/m3, 183-109 μg/m3, 9.9-8.0 μg/m3 and 10.2-8.2 μg/m3 respectively. Due to the presence of pollution control equipment and techniques as sprinklers, dry fog system, and dust extractor, etc., air pollutants are within the permissible limit of National Ambient Air quality standards (2009). Dust was the single largest air pollutant observed in the study area.