Fluoride and Metals in the Agricultural Soils of Mica Mining Areas of Jharkhand, India: Assessing the Ecological and Human Health Risk

ABSTRACT

The concentration of metals and fluoride in the agricultural soils of the mica mining areas of Jharkhand was estimated for human health risk assessment and source apportionment studies. The elemental concentrations of As, Co, Cu, Fe, Ni, Pb and Zn in the study area exceeded the world average values. The sources of the metals and fluoride in soil were suggested to be from both natural and human-induced activities as per principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA). The sources of Al, Fe, Mn and F in the soil were ascribed to the mica mining–related activities as indicated by PCA and CA. Potential ecological risk assessment suggested moderate risk with respect to Cd, Cu and Pb at few locations. Considering metals and fluoride content of the soils, non-cancer risk assessment suggested considerable risk to the child population which was largely due to Al and Fe. Taking into account all the pathways and elements, the HIs for the study area were calculated to be 0.586 and 3.58 for the adult and child residents, respectively. The carcinogenic risk assessment evaluated the cancer risk to be within the target risk of 1 × 10⁻⁴, suggesting insignificant cancer risk to the residents.

KEYWORDS:

• Metals
• fluoride
• soil
• human health risk assessment
• mica mining areas

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to the Department of Science and Technology for providing the necessary funding for the study under the DST-Women Scientist Scheme-A (Grant No. SR/WOS-A/EA-28/2018). Also, the authors are grateful to the Director and the Research group of Water Resource Management (WRM) of CSIR-Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research, Dhanbad, for providing the needed laboratory amenities and other logistic support to carry out the study.

Author’s contribution

SG is the principal investigator of the research project of which the present manuscript is an outcome and was involved in sampling, sample preparation, analysis, data compilation and statistical analysis. The data handling and writing of the present manuscript was done by SG. AKS was the mentor for the project and helped in correction of the manuscript and contributed in the improvement of the manuscript by giving valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Availability of data and materials

The data is provided as tables. For any other information corresponding author may be contacted

Additional information

Funding

The study has been funded by Department of Science and Technology under the DST-Women Scientist Scheme-A (Grant No. SR/WOS-A/EA-28/2018).