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Study on respiratory deposition doses of typical Indian opencast coal mineworkers using occupational particulate matter levels

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Abstract

The opencast coal mineworkers experience site-specific microenvironments (MEs) during coal production due to different benches. This study investigates the particulate matter (PM0.5, PM0.5-1, PM1-2.5, and PM2.5-10) exposure in MEs of opencast coal mines near Dhanbad, India. The present study estimates the respiratory deposition doses (RDD) to mineworkers exposed under standard working scenarios at the worksite during day time shift (DTS). The coarser mode particle mass concentration (PMC) and particle number concentration (PNC) are 1.4 to 10.6 and 2 to 7.5 times higher within mines at active mining locations, whereas accumulation mode PMC and PNC is 1.1 to 1.5 and 1.1 to 1.9 times higher outside the mines. The opencast mining-associated activities like the excavation of coal and overburden contribute more to the coarser fraction of particles. However, accumulation mode PMC and PNC dominates at locations with no such mining activities except dumper operations. The average RDD of PMC and PNC during DTS to mineworkers varies from 320.97 μg DTS-1 and 3.69×108 # DTS-1 and 3835.71 μg DTS-1 and 8.79×108 # DTS-1 respectively. The occupational RDD results reveal that onsite maintenance workers (OM) category of mineworkers are more vulnerable to accumulation mode PMC followed by blasting associated mineworkers (B), onsite executives (EM), maintenance workers (workshop) (MW), monitoring workers (M), HEMMs operators (O), workers at gathering point (G), and official executives (EO). Whereas OM category of workers is more vulnerable to coarser mode PMC followed by B, M, EM, O, MW, G, and EO category of mineworkers.

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Data availability

Data will be made available on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

MEs:

microenvironments

PM:

particulate matter

PNC:

particle number concentration

PMC:

particle mass concentration

RDD:

respiratory deposition doses

ICRP:

International Commission on Radiological Protection

HA:

head airways

TB:

tracheobronchial

AL:

Alveolar

LPA:

light physical activity

HPA:

heavy physical activity

CV:

coefficient of variance

B – 2 :

bench 2

B – 4 :

bench 4

B – 3 :

bench 3

B – 5 :

bench 5

HEMMs:

heavy earthmoving machineries

G:

gathering point

O:

HEMMs operators

M:

monitoring workers

B:

blasting associated workers

OM:

maintenance workers (onsite)

MW:

maintenance workers (workshop)

EM:

executives (onsite)

EO:

executives (official)

DTS:

day time shift

OB:

overburden

DTS:

day time shift

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to IIT(ISM) Dhanbad to avail the necessary instruments under the FRS project: FRS (40) /2012-2013/ESE, entitled “Physical and chemical characterization of PM for Dhanbad city to identify the contribution from traffic sources.” The authors wish to thank Bharat Cocking Coal Limited (BCCL) officials, Dhanbad, for permitting to conduct this study at one of their opencast coal mines. Moreover, the authors would like to thank the officials of the Dobari opencast mines, Bastacola Area and BCCL, for their support during the field study. The author is very much thankful to Mr. Abhishek Ananad, M.Tech, Department of ESE, IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, to provide the necessary support and physical presence during the field study. In the end, the authors are thankful to all other contributors involved directly or indirectly in this study.

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  1. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, Jharkhand, 826004, India

    Ambasht Kumar & Suresh Pandian Elumalai

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  1. Ambasht Kumar
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Ambasht Kumar performed data collection and analysis. The corresponding author framed the concept of the manuscript. The first authors wrote the first draft of the manuscript and the corresponding authors corrected the proof. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Suresh Pandian Elumalai.

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Kumar, A., Elumalai, S.P. Study on respiratory deposition doses of typical Indian opencast coal mineworkers using occupational particulate matter levels. Air Qual Atmos Health 14, 1247–1265 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-021-01014-w

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