Metals are vital to human but it can be toxic at higher levels, even if some elements are toxic at trace levels such as Hg, Cd, Pb and Cr, etc. In the present study, the site was divided to three categories such as mining, industrial and residential area. Mining area comprises the zone where exclusively sand beach mining and associated operations were carried out. The physical and chemical processing of separated beach sand and production of thorium operations were included in the industrial area and the population centre around the facility was assumed as the residential area.

Akhilesh Kumar Yadav is with the Department of Mining Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), Varanasi, India and the Civil Engineering Department of the Madan Mohan Malaviya Engineering College,Gorakhpur, India.