Profiling and occupational health risk assessment study on coal ashes in terms of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)

Abstract

Profiling and cancer risk assessment on the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) content of coal ashes produced by the major coal combustion plants from the eastern coalfield region in India was conducted. Thirteen PAHs were detected on coal ashes collected from ash deposition sites of major thermal power plants and the profiling of the PAHs was done. Benzo[a]pyrene equivalents (BaP_eq) for individual PAHs were calculated and applied to the probabilistic assessment model from US EPA (1989). Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to assess the risk of inhabitants exposed to PAHs through the dust of the coal ash deposition site. In fly ash, the range of total amount of carcinogenic PAHs was from 3.50 to 6.72 µg g⁻¹ and for the bottom ash, the range was 8.49 to 14.91 µg g⁻¹. Bottom ashes were loaded with ample amounts of 5- and 6-ring carcinogenic PAHs, whereas fly ashes were dominated by medium molecular weight PAHs. The simulated mean cancer risks from fly ashes were 2.187 E–06 for children and 3.749 E–06 for adults. For the case of bottom ash, the mean risks were 1.248 E–05 and 2.173 E–05 respectively for children and adults. Among all the three exposure routes, dermal contact was the major and caused 81% of the total cancer risk. The most sensitive parameters were exposure duration and relative skin adherence factor for soil, which contributed the most to total variation. The 90% risks calculated from the bottom ashes (2.617 E–05 for children and 4.803 E–05 for adults) are marginally above the acceptable limit (>1.000 E–06) according to US EPA. In this study, a comprehensive risk assessment on carcinogenic PAHs present in coal ashes was done for the first time that may be helpful to develop potential strategies against occupational cancer risk.

Keywords:

• PAHs exposure
• cancer risk
• Monte-Carlo simulation
• coal ash
• fly ash
• bottom ash
• occupational risk

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability statement

Data is available within the article or its supplementary materials.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.