Abstract
A number of risk ranking systems for contaminated sites have been developed by different jurisdictions. While the intent of each of these systems is similar, it is not clear whether they provide results that are comparable. In this paper, 20 contaminated sites are used to assess the United States’ Preliminary Assessment (PA) system, Sweden’s Methods for Inventories of Contaminated Sites (MICS) and New Zealand’s Risk Screening System (RSS) methods. The results were compared with each other and with Canada’s National Classification System for Contaminated Sites (NCSCS) as well as preliminary quantitative risk assessment (PQRA) results. The objectives were to determine if the systems yield similar recommendations regarding further actions, and to assess if there are acceptable correlations between different methods. The study concludes that PA, MICS and NCSCS methods can achieve similar conclusions, although there is a certain degree of inconsistency that is present, RSS can distinguish the very high and very low risk sites and, acceptable correlations exists among the methods except for PA and PQRA.
Highlights
A contaminated site is one in which soils, sediments and water are contaminated by substances above benchmark criteria
The study concludes that Preliminary Assessment (PA), Methods for Inventories of Contaminated Sites (MICS) and National Classification System for Contaminated Sites (NCSCS) methods can achieve similar conclusions, there is a certain degree of inconsistency that is present, Risk Screening System (RSS) can distinguish the very high and very low risk sites and, acceptable correlations exists among the methods except for PA and preliminary quantitative risk assessment (PQRA)
Six out of ten sites are among the “action needed” sites according to the PA system, with the exception of sites 3, 5, 11, 13; the ten sites are all among the high or medium risk categories according to RSS method; and seven out of ten sites are among the medium priority and high priority sites categories according to NCSCS system, with the exception of site 3, 9 and 13
Summary
A contaminated site is one in which soils, sediments and water (ground and surface) are contaminated by substances above benchmark criteria. Contaminated sites management refers to the process of identifying, assessing and remediating contaminated sites in order to protect soil and water resources [1]. In previous research by Thiessen and Achari [3], the 2008 NCSCS was evaluated against preliminary quantitative risk assessment (PQRA) results. The current paper extends the previous work by Thiessen and Achari [3] to investigate three other risk ranking systems and evaluate their output against each other as well as with PQRA results. To this end, data from 20 actual contaminated sites are used. Spearman rank correlations statistics are applied to determine if acceptable correlations exist between the results of the three methods, NCSCS and PQRA results
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