Determination of Heavy Metals in Indoor Dust in the Vicinity of Kota Thermal Power Plant under Meteorological Influence at an Industrial City

Abstract

Nowadays, the assessment of indoor air quality becomes quite significant owing to the extensive residing time spent by people at work place or at office. Keeping this in mind, this study aims at determining concentrations of selected anthropogenic origin metals (Cu, Pb, Cd and Zn) and crustal origin metals (Ca and Fe) in 47 dust samples obtained from indoor environment of houses in the industrial Kota city, India in summer months (March, April and May, 2022) and October 2022 under meteorological influence. On looking at the comparative concentration of the studied anthropogenic origin metals (Cu, Pb, Cd and Zn) Zn is found to be in highest concentration followed by Pb, Cu and Cd respectively. During summer season, meteorological parameters such as speed and direction of wind, relative humidity, temperature have been observed which are found to affect the concentration of metals. The wind rose indicates the sampling sites facing predominant North wind direction (21.20%) from point source Kota Thermal Power Plant (KTPP) in summer were closest to the source and hence encountered the highest metal burden. It is inferred from Enrichment factor, Pearson’s correlations and principal component analysis that coal burning at Kota Thermal Power Plant is the major source of heavy metal burden accompanied by other anthropogenic actions in the study area.