Trace elements in some Indian coals

Abstract

Better knowledge of coal quality characteristics may help to reduce some of the health problems caused by the trace elements present in coal.Trace elements can have profound adverse effects on the health of living near coal deposits ,people burning coal in homes or people burning coal in homes, living near coal deposits, coal mines, and coal-burning power plants. Trace elements such as arsenic and other hazardous elements emitted from coal-burning power plants in Europe and Asia have been shown to cause severe health problems. Perhaps the effective widespread health problems are caused by domestic coal combustion in growing countries where millions of people suffer from fluorosis and thousands from arsenic affected diseases. For example, information on concentrations and distributions of potentially toxic elements in coal may help delineate areas of a coal deposit to be avoided. Information on the modes of occurrence of these elements and the textural relations of the minerals in coal may help to predict the behaviour of the potentially toxic trace metals during coal cleaning, combustion, weathering, and leaching, so that by using modern methods of determination like AAS and AES we can find out the hazardous impacts of the trace elements present in coal.
Excess concentration of these trace elements such as cobalt, copper, selenium and zinc, and imbalances of these certain trace elements such as manganese and copper, and zinc and copper cause harmful human disease and environmental impacts. Their discoveries helped clinical scientists recognize functions of trace elements in humans and the effects of trace element deficiencies and excesses on human health. The trace elements Fe, Cu, Mn, and Zn are considered as the essential elements and their deficiency or excess may lead to several disorders in the human body. Pb and Cd are biologically nonessential and their presence in the human body above a limit is considered to be toxic and harmful. In this project the important trace elements like Arsenic (As), Iron (Fe), Nickel (Ni), Copper (Cu) and Aluminium (Al) ,which have a significant impact on environment and also on human health is discussed. To find out these trace elements in Coal experiments are being performed by using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy.