Abstract
ABSTRACTA health risk assessment for the Lin-Yuan Petrochemical Industrial Complex (LYPIC) in southern Taiwan was conducted in this study. The main aims of the study were to develop an emission inventory for the 21 processing plants in the LYPIC, conduct hazard identification based on the emission inventory, perform an exposure assessment by applying air dispersion modeling to obtain the annual average concentration of hazardous air pollutants near the LYPIC, and estimate the lifetime risk of cancer associated with volatile organic compound exposure for residents living in the vicinity of the LYPIC. Comparing with the reported monitoring data from several petrochemical and refinery plants in the world, the estimated exposure concentrations in this study were within reasonable range. The results of cancer risk assessment showed that the cumulative excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR) at four representative residential sites surrounding the LYPIC were in the range of 9.3 × 10–5 to 1.7 × 10–4. From a risk management perspective, in order to protect human health, greater emphasis on the reduction of emissions of benzene, 1,3-butadiene, acrylonitrile, and vinyl chloride is recommended. This study provides a feasible risk assessment procedure to identify the key carcinogenic chemicals emitted from a petrochemical industrial complex.
Highlights
The Lin-Yuan Petrochemical Industrial Complex (LYPIC) is in the Lin-Yuan district of Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan
The second dataset was extracted from SPECIATE 4.2 (US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 2009), a database established by the US EPA, which provides volatile organic compounds (VOCs) profiles for different manufacturing processes
The present study estimated the VOCs emitted from a petrochemical industrial complex, which included both upstream petroleum refining process and midstream petrochemical process
Summary
The Lin-Yuan Petrochemical Industrial Complex (LYPIC) is in the Lin-Yuan district of Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan. It is the second largest petrochemical industrial park in Taiwan, occupying an area of approximately 403 hectares and comprising 21 chemical and petrochemical companies. Petroleum refineries and petrochemical plants have been identified as the largest emitters of VOCs among the chemical industries (Pandya et al, 2007; Baltrėnas et al, 2011). In. VOCs in ambient air are an increasing concern because many of them have been identified to be human carcinogens. Two case-control studies from Taiwan indicated that living close to petrochemical industries may increase the risk of leukemia, especially in young people (Yu et al, 2006; Weng et al, 2008). As suggested by Barregard et al (2009), this may be a result of limited information on exposure to carcinogenic VOCs
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