Citation: Raj, D.; Kumar, A.; Tripti; Maiti, S.K. Health Risk Assessment of Children Exposed to the Soil Containing Potentially Toxic Elements: A Case Study from Coal Mining Areas. Metals 2022, 12, 1795. https://doi.org/10.3390/met12111795 Academic Editors: Manuel Aureliano and Antonije Onjia Received: 5 August 2022 Accepted: 20 October 2022 Published: 24 October 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). metals Article Health Risk Assessment of Children Exposed to the Soil Containing Potentially Toxic Elements: A Case Study from Coal Mining Areas Deep Raj 1,2, * , Adarsh Kumar 3, * , Tripti 3 and Subodh Kumar Maiti 2 1 Department of Environmental Science, School of Engineering and Sciences (SEAS), SRM University-AP, Amaravati 522240, India 2 Department of Environmental Science & Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad 826001, India 3 Laboratory of Biotechnology, Institute of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg 620002, Russia * Correspondence: deepraj2587@gmail.com (D.R.); adarsh.biorem@gmail.com (A.K.); Tel.: +7-9827350636 (A.K.) Abstract: Coal mine activities lead to the release of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) to the sur- rounding areas. The present study concerns the health risk caused due to the exposure of PTEs (Hg, As, Cd, Cr, and Pb) in the children residing in the areas around coal mines. The PTEs content and bioaccumulation coefficient (BAC) in the plant, viz., Albizia lebbeck and Madhuca longifolia growing on the nearby soils of the coal mine affected areas were also estimated. The results demonstrated that the hazard quotient (HQ) for Cr (0.211) in the roadside soil (RSS) was higher than other PTEs. The hazard index (HI) was also at the maximum in the RSS (0.553) followed by the core zone soil (0.541). In RSS, Cr contributed the maximum for the HI value (38%) which elucidated that Cr might cause health problem in the long term. The Cr concentration (5.49 mg kg -1 ) was also higher than other PTEs in the plant leaves of M. longifolia and was two-fold higher than A. lebbeck. Except Cd, the accumulation of other PTEs in the leaves of both the species were low, which could be due to their low availability in soils. The BAC for Cr in M longifolia was comparatively higher than A. lebbeck and was found at the maximum for Cd (0.29) in M longifolia. The outcomes of the study elucidated that although there is no severe health risk in children, the data indicated that the prolonged exposure to PTEs might lead to serious health issues. Keywords: toxic elements; coal mines; health risk; hazard index; bioaccumulation coefficient 1. Introduction The surface coal mining activity causes drastic and immediate degradation of soil [1]. It is axiomatic that soil quality gets deteriorated due to loss of vegetation cover, excavation, transportation, stockpiling of coal and waste rocks. The continuous deterioration of soil quality in the vicinity of the coal mines areas is of great concern for the environment. The coal mining activities release certain major potentially toxic metal(loid)s (PTEs) such as arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb) which are considered as the major soil polluters for the nearby areas [2,3]. Cortes-Ramirez et al. [4] has reported in his review which includes 28 epidemiological case studies which suggest there is a close relation between coal mining and a broad spectrum of diseases in population living in proximity of coal mining. Such severe health threat incidences might be caused by heavy metals released to the environment from coal mining and coal utilization, residential waste, industrial activities, and agricultural wastes due to expansion of settlement near coal industries [5,6]. These PTEs form an important polluting group, which tends to accumulate in the ecological food chain and affects human health [7,8]. Entry of these PTEs, such as Cd Metals 2022, 12, 1795. https://doi.org/10.3390/met12111795 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/metals