- Email: [email protected]
Risk Assesment in Environmental Management, D. Kofi Asante-Duah; John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK, 1998, 515 pages, ISBN 0-471-98147-8
Waste Management 19 (1999) 541±542
www.elsevier.nl/locate/wasman
Book review Risk Assesment in Environmental Management, D. Ko® Asante-Duah; John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK, 1998, 515 pages, ISBN 0-471-98147-8 Techniques for the assessment and management of contaminated land have undergone a revolution over the past two decades, primarily as a result of Superfund legislation in the US which presaged the introduction of risk-based assessment methods. While some have argued that risk assessment has long been the guiding principle of site investigation, assessment and management, albeit in a qualitative fashion [1], the risk assessment framework developed in the US and subsequently worked up into a series of manuals and guidance documents (for example, [2±5]) by the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) has served to formalise and systematise a hitherto fragmented ®eld. It is dicult to overemphasise the international in¯uence of US EPA risk assessment guidance. The ready availability of US EPA publications with thoroughly worked out methodolgies has resulted in their uptake by a number of national regulators as a default methodology for the assessment of contaminated land, often with little or no change. This book is a straightforward exposition of US EPAbased procedures for the risk assessment and risk management of contaminated land, interwoven with discussions on some of the key fundamentals on the fate and transport of chemicals in the environment and the toxic action of environmental chemicals. The book is logically structured, commencing with a general overview of the principles of risk assessment and the interface with environmental legislation. There follows an introduction to environmental fate and transport, modelling, toxicology and uncertainty analysis, and a discussion of the elements of a risk assessment (site characterisation, exposure analysis, toxic action and risk characterisation), leading into the presentation of algorithms linking the intake of a chemical with its environmental concentration and activity-related parameters such as inhalation rate and exposure time. The book concludes with a discussion on the derivation of risk-based action levels and remediation goals. The discussion is wide-ranging, touching on both human health and ecological risk assessment, but the text has a rather diuse narrative thread. While readers interested in the US regulatory approach to risk assessment will ®nd this book a useful
synthesis of the US EPA's numerous technical manuals, others will note that the text presents a somewhat onedimensional view of risk-based contaminated land assessment. Because of diering regulatory approaches to exposure circumstances and end-points in terms of the uses to which the land will be put, some risk assessment protocols developed in Europe place emphasis on pathways such as the soil±air transport pathway for volatiles, leading to build-up of vapour in the basements of dwellings (for example, RISK-HUMAN [6]). The soil±vegetation pathway is also regarded as crucial to the assessment of land potentially to be used for residential purposes, and models such as CLEA [7] have developed procedures to permit chemical-speci®c modelling of uptake rates. Both these exposure routes are less well characterised in the text than, say, dermal contact with soil. A particular feature of widely used approaches such as the Risk-Based Corrective Action (RBCA) framework developed by ASTM [8] is the tailoring of data collection and risk characterisation to the speci®c circumstances of the site, allowing for ``escape routes'' at several intermediate points in the evaluation process depending on the severity and degree of characterisation of the contamination. Other risk-based methods developed in Canada, Europe and elsewhere also build in a degree of ¯exibility, which has both strengths and weaknesses when compared with the more prescriptive approach described in the text. Readers of the present text may take away the impression of a rather more rigid, linear approach to site evaluation than is currently practised, even in the US. Texts on risk assessment often treat uncertainty analysis as an afterthought rather than as an integral part of the assessment process, a tendency that is not entirely avoided in the present book. While both deterministic and probabilistic techniques are discussed in the abstract, the example applications are wholly deterministic, using conventional default or worst case singlevalue exposure and activity parameters. A recent review of risk-based methods by the National Research Council [9] emphasises the importance of formal uncertainty analysis to set con®dence limits on the estimates of dose and risk obtained in the course of the evaluation. More recent risk-based methods such as CLEA [7] and LANDSIM [10] are embedded within a Monte Carlo framework, requiring parametric inputs and providing outputs that are expressed in probabilistic terms. In this
0956-053X/99/$ - see front matter # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0956-053X(99)00302-5
542
Book review / Waste Management 19 (1999) 541±542
respect the book is a compendium of past and current practices as opposed to opening a window on a new dawn in risk-based assessment. Possessors of the author's previous text [11] may wonder whether the book oers a dierent slant on the problem of site evaluation. In fact, the present book is an expansion of the previous text, covering much the same ground but in greater detail, and containing many of the same example calculations and case studies. Those who wish to possess the present text and not Managing Contaminated Sites will not be disadvantaged, while those owning the latter may feel themselves shortchanged when perusing the present text. In summary, this book provides an overview of conventional risk-based assessment practices, amalgamating diverse disciplines from physical chemistry to toxicology into a useful primer for risk assessment practitioners. However, readers may wish to supplement this text with guidance on how sensitivity and uncertainty analysis should be woven into the fabric of the risk assessment. References [1] Petts P, Cairney T, Smith M. Risk-based contaminated land investigation and assessment. Chichester (UK): John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
[2] US EPA. Superfund exposure assessment manual (EPA/540/188/001). Washington (DC): Oce of Emergency and Remedial Response, OSWER Directive 9285.5-1, 1986. [3] US EPA. Risk assessment guidance for Superfund. vol. I. Human health evaluation manual (interim ®nal 9/29/89: OSWER Directive 9285.7-01a). Washington (DC): Oce of Emergency and Remedial Response, 1989. [4] US EPA. Exposure factors handbook (EPA/600/8-89/043). Washington (DC): Oce of Health and Environmental Assessment, 1989. [5] US EPA. Framework for ecological risk assessment (EPA/630/R92/001). Washington (DC): Risk Assessment Forum, 1992. [6] Goldsborough DG, Smit PJ. RISC: computer models for soil investigation, risk analysis and urgency estimation. In: van den Brink WJ, Bosman R, Arendt F, editors. Contaminated soil '95. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995. [7] Ferguson C, Denner J. Soil guideline values in the UK: a new risk-based approach. In: Arendt F, Annokkee GJ, Bosman R, van den Brink WJ, editors. Contaminated soil '93. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publications, 1993. [8] American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM). Standard guide for risk-based corrective action applied at pertroleum release sites (E 1739-95). Conshohocken (PA): ASTM, 1998. [9] National Research Council. Environmental Cleanup at navy facilities: risk-based methods. Washington (DC): National Academy Press, 1999. [10] Golder Associates. LANDSIM manual release 1 (Reference no. CWM 094/96). Nottingham (UK): Golder Associates, 1996. [11] Asante-Duah DK. Managing contaminated sites: problem diagnosis and development of site restoration. Chichester (UK): John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
Gev H. Eduljee ERM Eaton House, Wallbrook Court North Hinksey Lane Oxford OX2 0QS UK E-mail address: [email protected]
www.elsevier.nl/locate/wasman
Book review Risk Assesment in Environmental Management, D. Ko® Asante-Duah; John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK, 1998, 515 pages, ISBN 0-471-98147-8 Techniques for the assessment and management of contaminated land have undergone a revolution over the past two decades, primarily as a result of Superfund legislation in the US which presaged the introduction of risk-based assessment methods. While some have argued that risk assessment has long been the guiding principle of site investigation, assessment and management, albeit in a qualitative fashion [1], the risk assessment framework developed in the US and subsequently worked up into a series of manuals and guidance documents (for example, [2±5]) by the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) has served to formalise and systematise a hitherto fragmented ®eld. It is dicult to overemphasise the international in¯uence of US EPA risk assessment guidance. The ready availability of US EPA publications with thoroughly worked out methodolgies has resulted in their uptake by a number of national regulators as a default methodology for the assessment of contaminated land, often with little or no change. This book is a straightforward exposition of US EPAbased procedures for the risk assessment and risk management of contaminated land, interwoven with discussions on some of the key fundamentals on the fate and transport of chemicals in the environment and the toxic action of environmental chemicals. The book is logically structured, commencing with a general overview of the principles of risk assessment and the interface with environmental legislation. There follows an introduction to environmental fate and transport, modelling, toxicology and uncertainty analysis, and a discussion of the elements of a risk assessment (site characterisation, exposure analysis, toxic action and risk characterisation), leading into the presentation of algorithms linking the intake of a chemical with its environmental concentration and activity-related parameters such as inhalation rate and exposure time. The book concludes with a discussion on the derivation of risk-based action levels and remediation goals. The discussion is wide-ranging, touching on both human health and ecological risk assessment, but the text has a rather diuse narrative thread. While readers interested in the US regulatory approach to risk assessment will ®nd this book a useful
synthesis of the US EPA's numerous technical manuals, others will note that the text presents a somewhat onedimensional view of risk-based contaminated land assessment. Because of diering regulatory approaches to exposure circumstances and end-points in terms of the uses to which the land will be put, some risk assessment protocols developed in Europe place emphasis on pathways such as the soil±air transport pathway for volatiles, leading to build-up of vapour in the basements of dwellings (for example, RISK-HUMAN [6]). The soil±vegetation pathway is also regarded as crucial to the assessment of land potentially to be used for residential purposes, and models such as CLEA [7] have developed procedures to permit chemical-speci®c modelling of uptake rates. Both these exposure routes are less well characterised in the text than, say, dermal contact with soil. A particular feature of widely used approaches such as the Risk-Based Corrective Action (RBCA) framework developed by ASTM [8] is the tailoring of data collection and risk characterisation to the speci®c circumstances of the site, allowing for ``escape routes'' at several intermediate points in the evaluation process depending on the severity and degree of characterisation of the contamination. Other risk-based methods developed in Canada, Europe and elsewhere also build in a degree of ¯exibility, which has both strengths and weaknesses when compared with the more prescriptive approach described in the text. Readers of the present text may take away the impression of a rather more rigid, linear approach to site evaluation than is currently practised, even in the US. Texts on risk assessment often treat uncertainty analysis as an afterthought rather than as an integral part of the assessment process, a tendency that is not entirely avoided in the present book. While both deterministic and probabilistic techniques are discussed in the abstract, the example applications are wholly deterministic, using conventional default or worst case singlevalue exposure and activity parameters. A recent review of risk-based methods by the National Research Council [9] emphasises the importance of formal uncertainty analysis to set con®dence limits on the estimates of dose and risk obtained in the course of the evaluation. More recent risk-based methods such as CLEA [7] and LANDSIM [10] are embedded within a Monte Carlo framework, requiring parametric inputs and providing outputs that are expressed in probabilistic terms. In this
0956-053X/99/$ - see front matter # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0956-053X(99)00302-5
542
Book review / Waste Management 19 (1999) 541±542
respect the book is a compendium of past and current practices as opposed to opening a window on a new dawn in risk-based assessment. Possessors of the author's previous text [11] may wonder whether the book oers a dierent slant on the problem of site evaluation. In fact, the present book is an expansion of the previous text, covering much the same ground but in greater detail, and containing many of the same example calculations and case studies. Those who wish to possess the present text and not Managing Contaminated Sites will not be disadvantaged, while those owning the latter may feel themselves shortchanged when perusing the present text. In summary, this book provides an overview of conventional risk-based assessment practices, amalgamating diverse disciplines from physical chemistry to toxicology into a useful primer for risk assessment practitioners. However, readers may wish to supplement this text with guidance on how sensitivity and uncertainty analysis should be woven into the fabric of the risk assessment. References [1] Petts P, Cairney T, Smith M. Risk-based contaminated land investigation and assessment. Chichester (UK): John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
[2] US EPA. Superfund exposure assessment manual (EPA/540/188/001). Washington (DC): Oce of Emergency and Remedial Response, OSWER Directive 9285.5-1, 1986. [3] US EPA. Risk assessment guidance for Superfund. vol. I. Human health evaluation manual (interim ®nal 9/29/89: OSWER Directive 9285.7-01a). Washington (DC): Oce of Emergency and Remedial Response, 1989. [4] US EPA. Exposure factors handbook (EPA/600/8-89/043). Washington (DC): Oce of Health and Environmental Assessment, 1989. [5] US EPA. Framework for ecological risk assessment (EPA/630/R92/001). Washington (DC): Risk Assessment Forum, 1992. [6] Goldsborough DG, Smit PJ. RISC: computer models for soil investigation, risk analysis and urgency estimation. In: van den Brink WJ, Bosman R, Arendt F, editors. Contaminated soil '95. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995. [7] Ferguson C, Denner J. Soil guideline values in the UK: a new risk-based approach. In: Arendt F, Annokkee GJ, Bosman R, van den Brink WJ, editors. Contaminated soil '93. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publications, 1993. [8] American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM). Standard guide for risk-based corrective action applied at pertroleum release sites (E 1739-95). Conshohocken (PA): ASTM, 1998. [9] National Research Council. Environmental Cleanup at navy facilities: risk-based methods. Washington (DC): National Academy Press, 1999. [10] Golder Associates. LANDSIM manual release 1 (Reference no. CWM 094/96). Nottingham (UK): Golder Associates, 1996. [11] Asante-Duah DK. Managing contaminated sites: problem diagnosis and development of site restoration. Chichester (UK): John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
Gev H. Eduljee ERM Eaton House, Wallbrook Court North Hinksey Lane Oxford OX2 0QS UK E-mail address: [email protected]