Investigation of Heavy Metals and Radionuclide’s Impact on Environment Due to The Waste Products of Different Iron Processing Industries in Chittagong, Bangladesh

Abstract

The waste products, such as induction furnace slag, ladle furnace slag, air pollution control dust, and ramming mass collected from major iron processing industries in Chittagong, Bangladesh were analyzed for heavy metals and naturally radioactive elements. The concentrations of heavy metals Fe, Cr, Mn, Co, Cd, Ni, Pb, Cu and Zn were obtained from atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS) analysis with flame atomizer and the radioactivities due to 226 Ra, 232 Th and 40 K were determined using high purity germanium (HPGe) detector of well shielded gamma-ray counting system. From the mean specific activities of the above three natural radionuclides in the investigated samples, the radium equivalent activity (Ra eq ) and the external hazard index (H ex ) were calculated. The study showed the prospect of contamination of environmental materials (viz., soil, water, air, plant) due to many of these investigated elements by using the collected waste products in landfill. The chemical process of ion exchange indicates that the elevated heavy metals in soil can play a role to increase the natural radioactivity of the soil. The obtained Ra eq as well as H ex indicated the insignificant radiation hazard due to the activities of primordial radionuclides found in the investigated samples.

Assessment of the Levels of Pollution and of Their Risks by Radioactivity and Trace Metals on Marine Edible Fish and Crustaceans at the Bay of Bengal (Chattogram, Bangladesh)

“…The concentration corresponding to the absorption in the digest was determined by using the absorption mode. The minimum detection limits of the analyzer for the investigated trace metals in ppm are 0.002 (Cd), 0.010 (Cu), 0.005 (Zn), 0.050 (Pb), 0.010 (Mn), 0.020 (Fe), 0.020 (Ni), and 0.020 (Cr) [22]. The limits of detection (LODs) for all the elements analyzed in the samples were calculated as the blank signal plus three times its standard deviation, whereas the limit of quantification (LOQ) was calculated as ten times the standard deviation of the blank signal, following [23,24].…”

Contribution of Groundwater quality to the Industrialization of Textile Sector in Bangladesh

“…Narayangonj district has comparatively higher iron content because water gets polluted by the contamination from heavy steel industries situated on this area [38]. Chittagong zone has the highest iron content among all the sampling zones, which happen due to the presence of more than 20 industries around it ranging from steel industries to salt crushing to pulp and paper industries [39,40]. E uent from these industries contains higher amount of iron minerals which is dumped directly or after little treatment results in high iron content.…”

Non-Fired Building Blocks Using Industrial Wastes

“…Bangladesh has over 400 steel mills of different categories and sizes with over 4 million tons annual production. Most of the Bangladesh steel industries use induction furnaces that produce approximately 3.2 million tons of steel every year and 250 thousand tons of Induction Furnace Slag (IFS) (Rahman et al, 2017). About 60-80 kg of Ladle Furnace Slag (LFS) is recovered to refine each ton of steel (Papayianni and Anastasiou, 2012).…”