Introduction to Contaminated Site Management - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 48

Nevertheless, for site-specific Risk Assessment, relevant information might be
available that facilitates the assessments of risks for human health, the soil ecosys-
tem, the groundwater, or Food Safety. Although not all information present might
be relevant, a huge asset is that measurements can be performed, which significantly
improve the quality of the Risk Assessment, and reduce uncertainties (see Section
1.7.3 ).
1.7.1.3 Potential Risk Assessment
The term 'potential' is not to be missed in any list of vague terminology.
Paradoxically, it also is a very useful term in contaminated site management.
Literally, in the sense of 'possible, when certain conditions apply', there is a
potential unacceptable risk at any site where contaminants have been measured by
definition, independent of the concentration. The 'certain conditions that apply' are,
for example, an intensive contact of human beings with the soil with regard to human
health risks, a relatively high bioavailability of the contaminants in soil with regard
to Ecological Risk Assessment and Food Safety, or a low pH and the presence of
metals with regard to Groundwater-related Risk Assessment.
A potential unacceptable risk also might refer to the fact that a site-specific Risk
Assessment has resulted in the conclusion 'unacceptable risk, with a low level of
reliability'. This could be the case, for example, when only a first step in a wider
Risk Assessment framework has been performed, with conclusions based on the
chemical analyses reports of a limited number of samples. However, since risk-
based soil quality assessment is characterised by substantial uncertainties in general,
the adjective 'potential' in the meaning of 'conditional' could practically always
be added. The only benefits of this use of the term 'potential' would be to stress
the lack of reliability to the stakeholders. This function increases the level of con-
fusion rather than supporting the Risk Assessment and the Risk Communication.
Therefore, 'potential' should not be used for the purpose of alerting those involved
to the limited reliability of a Risk Assessment.
A more appealing use of the phrase potential Risk Assessment , in this context
also referred to as generic Risk Assessment, is related to the derivation and use of
Soil Quality Standards. Since Soil Quality Standards are not focused on a specific
site, but rather relate to a whole series of unknown contaminated sites, these Soil
Quality Standards must be derived from generic scenarios.
1.7.2 Soil Quality Standards
Soil Quality Standards (aka: (soil) Guideline Values, (soil) Screening Values, or
Target Levels) are generic values enabling a distinction into two classes for which
the measured concentrations in soil are either higher or lower than the Soil Quality
Standard. They can be considered as the core of contaminated site management. In
the early days of contaminated site management, a list with Soil Quality Standards
was about the only appraisal framework available, and often used for the separation