Cement, Energy & Environment

Effect of Cement Dust Pollution on Soil and Crops around Orient Cement! Nashirabad! Distt. Jalgaon (M.S .) Abstract Shivprakash Nema Unit Head Orient Cement, Jalgaon The effect of cement dust pollution on physico– chemical properties of soil, morphological and biochemical characteristics of plants was analyzed and evaluated the fertility of soil and response of plants in two zones (i) 0 to 1 km and (ii) 1 to 10 km around Orient Cement, as Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) India, has listed cement amongst 17 most polluting industries. Umited study have been carried out in this context and most of them have reported many adverse effects of cement dust on plants around the cement industries resulted in decrease in final crop yield. During this study we have observed that the soiJ characteristics in both zones were aJmost in ranges decided by the Agriculture Universities and relative deficiencies of nutrients can be fulfilled by external addition of fertilizers. This showed that the fertility of soil and crop productivity have not been altered because of air (dust) pollution generated from Orient Cement (OC) as OC has provided more than sufficient No. of dust collectors for controlling the dust from Raw material handling, clinker grinding process and packing facility. Introduction Natural air pollutants have aJways been a part of discussion whenever environment comes in the taJk. It is well known that depending on the load, duration of the exposure, chemical composition of air pollutants and the tolerance of the plant, pollution may cause negative or positive effects in plant growth and biomass formation. There are number of air pollutants, cement dust is one of them as declared by Central Pollution Control Board, India (Raajasubramanian et al 2011 ). The cement dust coming from cement industry (CI) is Raghuvansh K Pandey Asst. Manager (Env. & Safety) OrientCemen~Ja~aon containing oxides of calcium, potassium and sodium (Stem 1976) which are affecting plants in various ways i.e. (a} uptake of nutrients from soil by plants, (b) plugging stomata, (c) interrupting absorption of light and diffusion of gases, (d) lowering starch formation, (e) reducing fruit setting (Lerman 1972}, inducing premature leaf fall and leading to stunted growth (Darley 1966). Finally, these changes are reducing the - 1. Soil fertility, 2. The crop yield and 3. Vegetation cover Several studies described negative changes in physiro-chemical properties of soil and physiology and biochemistry of plants under high levels of alkaline cement dust reported reduction in the number of flowers and yield of black gram due to cement dust pollution while Gupta and Mishra (1994) studied the toxic effect of cement dust on some plants. The hypothesis tested in this study is that the activities of Cl do not have drastic negative effects on viability of agriculture production by comparative study of soils and aops in nearby zones. The indicators used for the evaluation were, physical and chemical properties of soil, morphology of plants, concentration of photosynthetic pigments, photosynthesis rates and other biochemical parameters (reducing sugars, total carbohydrates and protein content). llat.erials and Methods Experimental site The study was conducted in the vicinity of Orient Cement (OC) standalone Clinker Grinding