Study of Pollution of Waste Water Caused By Iron Ore Processing In Desert Areas (Case Study: Bafgh Area)

Environmental pollution as technologic desertification factor is the most important challenging issue in industrialized and developing societies. Due to the presence of several mineral sites in Bafgh, the most important reason of desertification is pollution caused by industries and mines. This study aims to determine the emissions effluent from processing iron ore in the Bafgh region. Totally, 16 samples of effluent were taken over the period 2008- 2013, and 18 parameters were measured in the laboratory. After testing the related data normality and variance analysis, index of PI, IPI and MCd were determined for the collected data. The results showed that 27.7% of the parameters are without non-significant year changing while 72.3% of the parameters have significant annual changes. The results for the PI index showed that 66.6% of the parameters show less contamination level and 33.4% of the parameters are at moderate to high contamination level. According to the results obtained for the IPI and MCd index, Nitrate (NO3) and Sulfate (SO4) classified at the moderate and high levels of pollution and determined as the contaminants of effluent from processing. Considering desert ecosystems are sensitive and fragile, it is suggested to determine the concentration of pollutants in the wastewater processing parameters with deposited sediments to study the feasibility of removing contaminants by phytoremediation. It might be useful to determine desertification intensity in Central Iron Ore Company marginal and desert regions in Bafgh with the conventional models and taking into account the environmental pollution, Nitrate and Sulfate indices.