Abstract
The World Health Organization opined that suspended particulate matter (e.g. PM2.5, PM10) are affecting more people worldwide than any other pollutant. This study aimed to determine the status of particulate matter, elemental composition of granite and weather parameters via sampling and analysis of samples from different locations at quarry site in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. The highest concentrations of Pb (2.00±0.05 mg/kg), Zn (6.85±0.06 mg/kg), Mn (94.21±0.13 mg/kg), Fe (3,461.65±3.61 mg/kg), Ca (5.41±0.01 %) and K (0.24±0.02 %) in different sizes of granites were recorded in dust particles. The order of abundance of the elemental composition in granites is: Fe > Mn > Zn > Ca > Mg > Pb > Co > As > Na > K. The highest temperature (45.88±0.53 °C) and relative humidity (49.05±0.21 %) was recorded close to the conveyor belt and walk way to pit, respectively. The concentration of PM2.5 (69.00±1.41 µg/m3) and PM10 (2,829.50±12.02 µg/m3) were highest at the chippings deposition cum collection point. The concentration of PM2.5 is higher than the permissible limit set by United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and World Health Organization (WHO). The concentration of PM10 is substantially above the permissible limit set by WHO. This suggest that quarry workers, and the wider community are subjected to prevailing environmental health threat. This emphasizes the need for rigorous implementation of existing environmental legislations established to protect the environment and public health.
Highlights
Quarrying as a land-use practice is the extraction of non-fuel and non-metal minerals from rock deposited in the earth’s crust (Okere et al, 2001; Ogbonna et al, 2011)
The result indicates that the highest concentration of Pb (2.00±0.05 mg/kg), Zn (6.85±0.06 mg/kg), Mn (94.21±0.13 mg/kg ) and Fe (3461.65±3.61mg/kg) were obtained in the dust particle size collected from the china quarry site at Ngwogwo and the values are significantly (P < 0.05) higher than their corresponding values in the 0.50 unmixed size (0.73±0.04, 3.97±0.01, 90.68±0.00 and 2.415.60±36.20 mg/kg), the 0.50 mixed size (1.73±0.23, 5.71±0.39, 93.20±0.27 and 3154.71±28.72mg/kg), the 3/7 inch size (0.72±0.01, 3.72±0.04, 90.43±0.11 and 2332.20±60.95 mg/kg), the 3⁄4 inch size (0.70±0.00, 3.63±0.12, 91.55±0.35 and 2,517.25±5.73 mg/kg), the 1⁄2 inch size (0.61±0.05, 6.15± 0.06, 92.23±0.32 and 2592.63±12.13 mg/kg), the 1 inch size (0.69±0.00, 5.76±0.06, 92.17±0.33 and 2389. 65±2.05 mg/kg) and the hard-core (0.47±0.01, 4.27±0.02, 84.80±0.42 and 2427.55±1.06 mg/kg), respectively for Pb, Zn, Mn and Fe
The concentration of Pb increased from 0.47±0.01 to 2.00±0.05 mg/kg and the values is well below 14.30 to 23.99 mg/kg reported in branded gneiss, granite and quartzite at Okemesi-Ijero area South Western Nigeria (Ayodele et al, 2018), 21.3 to 184.0 mg/kg in biotite granite and 6.0 to 39.5 mg/kg in mica granite in the Variscan Erzgebirge, Germany (Forster et al.,1998), 2.0 to 24.0 mg/kg in volcanic rocks (Husin et al, 2015) but relatively lower than 3.0 mg/kg in igneous rock (Alloway, 1995)
Summary
Quarrying as a land-use practice is the extraction of non-fuel and non-metal minerals from rock deposited in the earth’s crust (Okere et al, 2001; Ogbonna et al, 2011). The atmosphere is one of the major pathways for transport of dust contaminated with heavy metals and the major external input of bio-available metals in the environment, which are potential threats to the health and survival of people (Ogbonna et al, 2018) living in proximity to quarry sites. This may be because quarry atmosphere is submitted to large inputs of heavy metals arising from stationary source such as blasting of rock and large volume of tailing dust at quarry site
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