Impact & Assessment of Automotive Lubricants Contamination in the Ecosystem: A case study.

In recent times public attention has focused increasingly on environmental on environmental pollution and its effects on the human and other living organisms. Among the major pollutants are the wastes from an urbanized and industrialized society. Soil is the primary recipient, intended or otherwise, of many these wastes products furthermore, once these contaminants enters the system they become part of the cycles which effects the mankind. Several factors accounts for the emergence of the contamination as an important ecological problem. Modern technologies and continuous demand and usage of these elements is much larger in quantities a compared to the past. Planning for sustainable development at this stage will be more appropriate when we are still in the early stages of this inexorable process of global warming. Growing environmental awareness and prospects of more stringent legislative regulation regarding the usage of petroleum products have spurred renewed interest in informing and motivating users to take concrete corrective measures to conserve the lubricants and use its judiciously . The two key economic indicators that drive the pace of the energy demand are population and domestic products and these two factors are putting ecological stress on the environment. Rapid growth is also contaminating the soils as well. The lubricants which comes out from the vehicles or the industries is being disposed either directly or indirectly to the ground without having a proper disposal plans and letter it contaminates not only the soil but also contaminates the ground water system of the area. The quantities of petroleum products in which these inorganic contaminations are used have increased notably over the period of time. Efforts are being made towards this direction to estimate the impact and interaction of lubricants constituting the lube oil, such as paraffin , napthenes, aromatics and additive package. Amount of contamination done by these petroleum products to the system and their measurements is now possible with the advent of new techniques and tools. The discovery of the accumulation of one contaminant has prompted investigation of others, leading to a better understanding of the cycling of these elements in our ecosystem. Under the present phase of study, samples of air, water & soil have been collected from predetermined lube oil contaminating prone locations. Air samples have been characterized from various parameters like SPM, RSPM, SOx, and NOx using spectrophotometer. The water sample have been characterize for basic physico-chemical properties like temperature turbidity, TDS, Conductivity, pH , DO, Bicarbonates, Total hardness, calcium concentration, calcium hardness, Magnesium, Chloride, Sodium, Potassium and oil and grease for full quantification