A Comprehensive Review of Risk Assessments of Organic Effluents in Car Workshops

Abstract

Water is an essential resource for the functioning of society, where it is involved in key areas such as domestic use, agriculture, energy production, industry, and transport. Climate change exacerbates water scarcity. In the context of preserving water resources, effluents from the automobile sector need to be deeply considered due to their environmental impacts. This review focuses especially on the water effluents generated by car workshops. In car workshops, daily floor washing waters containing organic pollutants, either from vehicle components or from products used for maintenance and repair, can represent large volumes of water (between 15 L and 50 L per day) that are discharged into the wastewater system. These particular industrial organic effluents are not well characterized and can represent severe environmental risks. The aim of this review is to help automotive maintenance and repair professionals better manage these industrial organic effluents. We first describe the potential sources of organic pollution emissions in car workshops with the purpose of identifying the organic compounds to be monitored as a priority in the wash water. Then, we apply a risk prevention management tool, based on the criticality matrix, to identify products with a high risk of leaking onto the ground in order to limit organic pollutants at the source.