PM10 in the ambient air of Chandrapur coal mine and its comparison with other environments

This study compares the ambient air particulate matter (PM10) data of 15 different coal mine environments. For most of these mine environments, the monitoring was carried out by different researchers using respirable dust sampler (RDS) that separates PM10 by centrifugal inertial separation. At two sites — Padmapur and Ghugus (Chandrapur, Maharashtra, India) — mass inertial impaction-based sampler was used for PM10 monitoring. It is observed that the spatiotemporal average value of ambient air PM10 monitored using mass inertial impactor reports relatively higher values (240–372 μg/m³) compared to those monitored using RDS (<227 μg/m³). In order to realize the severity of mine area pollution, it is compared with PM10 values found in an urban area (Delhi, India). It is found that PM10 values in Delhi (using mass inertial impactor) are much higher (300–400 μg/m³) than those reported for the mine environment. The data seems to indicate that the mine environment is relatively cleaner than urban air and therefore raises doubt about the appropriateness of using either mass impactor or RDS for PM10 sampling.