Health and Environmental Impacts and Control Measures in the Aggregate-Crushing Industrial Sector of Asia: A 20-Year Systematic Literature Review

This operation of stone crushing results in a significant contribution to environmental and human health issues through 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 PM2.5 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. This systematic literature review 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. Methodologically, PRISMA has been followed to construct this systematic literature review. In this piece, articles from the 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 employed for collecting metadata for comparison and analysis. In a nutshell, it has been observed 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.