Perception and legacy of soil chromium and lead contamination in an operational small-scale coal mining community

The dangerous link between coal dust exposure and DNA damage: unraveling the role of some of the chemical agents and oxidative stress

“…This observation suggests that chronic exposure to contaminants present in the mining environment may disrupt the homeostasis of Fe, Na, and P in the body. The inverse correlation observed could be attributed to the toxic effects of heavy metals commonly found in coal mining (Islam et al, 2023). Some heavy metals from coal have the potential to interfere with the proper absorption, metabolism, and excretion of Fe, Na, and P, thereby leading to a decline in their urinary concentrations (Jaishankar et al, 2014;Witkowska et al, 2021).…”

“…In this study, we also investigated the factors that could potentially influence the induction of genomic instability in the studied population. Coal has a highly complex chemical composition, containing various amounts of trace elements and metals due to its formation from compressed organic matter that contains almost all the elements of the periodic table (Gopinathan et al, 2022a(Gopinathan et al, , 2022b, including heavy metals (Islam et al, 2023;Israr et al, 2022;Song et al, 2022). Coal also contains fly ashes (Panda & Dash, 2020), oxides (Chen et al, 2013;Panda & Dash, 2020), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (Liu et al, 2008;Ren et al, 2022), among other compounds.…”