Search

Urbanization and fast industrial development in the Indian subcontinent is the most inevitable curse in disguise. Lack of transparency in the legal rules for pollution control and almost no environmental awareness among the common people are the prime factors that drove our clean, green, and healthy environment towards graveyard. Geoscientists and Environmental experts throughout the globe are struggling hard to develop sustainable ways to detect and control the environmental issues. Important among them stand the geophysical studies among which magnetic susceptibility (MS) mapping is a major tool. This lies on the fact that the ferro-magnetic minerals (the chief contributors towards positive susceptibility), mainly magnetite, are good store houses of toxic elements. The aim of present study is to unravel the distribution of MS in the Kolaghat Thermal Power Station (KTPS) and surrounding regions for demarcating the potentially polluted domains by mapping the MS value of the road dust collected from the study area. The observed values of the mass susceptibility show wide range of variation within 1.24 x 10-6cm3/g and 47 x 10-6 cm3/g respectively with an average of 24 x 10-6cm3/g. The calculated statistical parameters (high variance value of 221.30) reveal the same. The MS mapping (both in 2D and 3D) shows that the MS values are higher in the areas with adverse effects of fly-ash deposition sourced from the KTPS. Some areas are evidently polluted highly and measures high MS values with low Frequency Dependent Susceptibility (FDS). The results reveal that the major reason for the degradation of the environment in the study area is anthropogenic which needs to be controlled by employing remedial measures and developing more awareness among the people through extension programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]