摘要：Coal mining is one of the anthropogenic activities that pose serious threats to environment.The coal fields of Salt Range which have the largest coal reserves in Punjab,Pakistan were visited and sampled for soil and water in order to determine the status of pollution around coal mines.Soil sample were collected from the rhizosphere of coal fields after removing the layer of mine spoils from it while water samples were collected from those coal fields only which were draining water from mines.Afterwards the soil and water samples were tested for presence of acidity or alkalinity,hardness,salinity and metal toxicity.The study of soil and water attributes corroborated the presence of alkaline as well as acidic nature of Mine Drainage with a higher level of TDS, salinity and metal toxicity in soil and water.Among heavy metals,Iron followed by Manganese contributed the most in metal toxicity across the mines.The study also confirmed the spread of mine spoils to a larger area with a course of drains to towards River Jehlum which may spread the pollution on a larger scale.Moreover a large variation was observed in pollution around the mines where the site with combined effluents of Salt & Coal Mines and Alkhair Coal Mines were indicated as the most polluted sites of the area.The Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC) of soil samples revealed that the samples taken from Munarah Hills (site with no mine spoil or mine drainage) was different from all other sites which validate the role of coal mines in spreading pollution across the area.
