A Human Health Risk Assessment Software for Facilitating Management of Urban Contaminated Sites: A Case Study: The Massa Site, Tuscany, Italy

ABSTRACT

The goal of this article is to present the Human Health Risk Assessment (HRA) software developed as one of the NORISC ¹ decision support software system components that could be used as a tool for facilitating management of urban contaminated sites. The NORISC-HRA software provides sufficient technical and procedural support to conduct a simple site-specific risk assessment. The employed HRA methodology is generally based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) procedures. The software determines the level and spatial distribution of human health risks at a given site and sets up site-specific preliminary Health-Based Remedial Goals (HBRGs)/Risk-Based Concentrations (RBCs) for soil and groundwater. The NORISC-HRA software is recommended for use when national soil and groundwater limit values are exceeded. Exposure pathways considered in this software are associated with three land use patterns—residential, industrial/commercial, and recreational. The aricle also presents the software testing results obtained at one of the NORISC test sites—the Massa site (Avenza-Carrara, Tuscany, Italy). Findings of the HRA indicated that the contaminated soil at the Massa test site might pose potential cancer and non-cancer risks to industrial workers in its present condition. Arsenic was the dominant substance responsible for most of the baseline risk and at the RBC of 1.77 mg/kg it was the primary driver of remedial decisions at the Massa site.

¹NORISC is the acronym of the project “Network Oriented Risk assessment by In-situ Screening of Contaminated sites” realized under under the 5th European Union Community Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities.

Key words:

• human health risk assessment
• human health risk assessment software
• urban contaminated sites
• risk-based concentrations
• remedial goals
• site management.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was performed under the NORISC project (EKV4-CT-2000-00026—Amendment No. 1) financially supported by the European Commission's 5th Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities—Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development, and by the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research (Projects No. 120/DC/03 and No. 760/DC/03).

The authors thank Dr. Christopher Teaf, Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA, and Mr. Alecos Demetriades, Institute of Geology and Mineral Exploration, Regional Unit of Central Macedonia (IGME), Thessaloniki, Greece, for reviewing this manuscript and for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹NORISC is the acronym of the project “Network Oriented Risk assessment by In-situ Screening of Contaminated sites” realized under under the 5th European Union Community Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities.

²CLARINET was funded by the European Commission under the 4th RTD Framework Programme.

*Every day from April to October—assumed as a professional judgment.

**Assumed 2 hours per day.

³It is planned to extend the HRA application to give the user possibility of such a segregation. At present the relevant segregation can be considered only out of the HRA application.

⁴The individual exposed both as a child and as an adult is termed the aggregate resident or the aggregate recreational user. Aggregate cancer risk is calculated as the sum of the child cancer risk and the adult cancer risk.

⁵Subsurface soil is taken into account in case of volatiles.

⁶The Italian limit values for soil are used as a tool for making decisions on remediation targets. If the limits are exceeded, a contaminated site must be remediated using appropriate “safety measures” to bring concentrations down at least to these limit values (DM 1999; Bardos et al. 2003).

⁷Guideline values in Italy are not established for Mn.

⁸Lead was treated as a special case because the methodology employed in the NORISC-HRA is not applicable to lead. For assessing risk associated with worker exposure to this metal in soil at the Massa site, the methodology recommended for such situations by the USEPA Technical Review Workgroup (TRW) was used (USEPA 2003b).

^a USEPA (2003a);

^b USEPA (2001b);

^c USEPA (1995);

^d USEPA (2002).

^eThe dermal RfD values were calculated by multiplying the oral RfDs by the ABS_GI values.

^fThe dermal CSF values were calculated by dividing the oral CSFs by the ABS_GI values.