Impact of Coal Mining on Health Condition of the Local Residents: A study from Salanpur Coal belt Area of West Bengal

Abstract

In coal mining belt both formal and informal/illegal coal mining are responsible for the creating various types of health hazards for the local residents. Formal miners tries to mitigate the environmental related hazards which is in turn responsible for various health related problems among the residents who live nearby by adopting EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) technique whereas informal/illegal miners did not adopt any such techniques. Here our study focuses on the perception of the local residents about the impact of formal as well as informal/illegal mining on health condition of the local residents. For this we took sample of 500 household members from mining village (MV) and non-mining or controlled village (CV). We specially check whether mining activities in MV has any significant impact on health condition of the residents or not. For our study we apply Mann-Whitney U test. Based on the analysis of the perception of the sample households regarding the impact of illegal coal mining on the health condition of the resident’s majority of the respondent agreed that illegal coal mining has adverse impact on health condition of the local residents. The realizations of the impact of illegal coal mining on health are significantly higher in MV than that in the CV. Due to the existence of formal and illegal coal mining in the MV, ground water condition as well as air quality is deteriorated which is responsible for various types of air borne as well as water borne diseases among the local residents in comparison to the CV situated slightly away from the MV