Aggregate-crushing Industry, Health and Environmental Hazards and Control Mechanism in Asia in Last 20 years: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Aggregate-crushing industrial sector plays a crucial role in the construction industry. It produces various desired sizes and shapes of stones depending on the construction of residential or commercial buildings, canals, highways, rail lines, dams, offshore structures, bridges, etc. This operation of stone-crushing results in a significant contribution to environmental and human health by means of air and noise pollution. Crushing of large-sized stones to desired-sized stones (by stone crusher) generates significantly large amounts of fine particulate matter like PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ that directly affect the nearby atmosphere and human health by posing severe respiratory health risks to workers and the nearby communities like wheezing, asthma, cardiovascular issues, dyspnoea, cough, silicosis, etc. Aggregate-crushing machineries lead to environmental degradation by affecting the vegetation and air quality, disrupting local biodiversity. It causes oil contamination. Moreover, High machinery noise during operations like crushing, material handling processes, and heavy-load vehicular movement often exceeds permissible noise limits, leading to noise pollution that affects both human well-being and other health issues in local society and crusher workers. This systematic review elaborates on the findings of different regional research studies that highlight the concern about pollution due to the stone crusher and its effect on human health, the environment, and biodiversity. It also highlights the mitigation methods like green buffer zones, enclosure of crushers, suppression systems, and acoustic barriers by research from all over Asian countries. This review also discusses the corresponding legislative frameworks and standard regulations for emissions and noise levels, in accordance with evaluating the difference between the findings and the prescribed limits. This review paper presents a holistic view of the concept of how stone crushers affect the health and environment and sheds light on innovative solutions. Also, the future research recommendations highlight the critical role of the development of advanced pollution control technologies, the adoption of community-focused strategies, and the alignment of the stone crusher operations with broader sustainable development objectives. Methodologically, PRISMA has been followed to construct this systematic literature review. In this piece, articles from he last 20 years, contextual to Asian countries, have been reviewed. The countries that have been found under the Asian context are India, China, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Iraq, Pakistan, Nepal, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia. After a vigorous review, 296 papers were narrowed down to 40 MES assessments. The Scopus platform was used for collecting metadata for comparison and analysis. In a nutshell, it has been found that research related to the awareness of health & environment and mitigation in the last few decades in the Asian context matches the corresponding global footsteps.