Environmental risks and impacts - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 201

Figure 8.4 Environmental management: direct and indirect impacts.
an individual problem, which should be treated separately in the management's first
phase. Later on, simultaneous problems should be bundled depending on the target,
for example, the risk of contaminated air, drinking water and food are combined when
considering human receptors. In addition to the direct adverse impacts of natural and
anthropogenic deterioration and contamination, the broader social, economic, cultural
and ethical context shown by the blue cuboids in Figure 8.4 significantly influences
the risk and health of the environment and humans.
Diffuse contamination is normally managed at catchment scale starting from the
chemicals, dealing with their emissions or imissions and ending up with the contami-
nation of the watershed as the final target. Entirely the reverse concept is applied by
the assessment of impacts on the receptors where all potential or real adverse effects
which the receptor is exposed to are summarized. The receptor may be an environ-
mental compartment in general, for example surface waters, agricultural soil, or a
concrete site or area such as the Lake Balaton in Hungary, the Black Sea, the Mediter-
ranean or the globe itself. The source-related and receptor-related assessment and
management of the environment are not harmonized and their applications are not
integrated. More will be explained about point and diffuse sources in this volume,
Chapter 9.
The source- or contaminant-specific risk management, as shown in Figure 8.5, has
been upgraded by the management of the risk of chemical mixtures and the addition or
weighted summation of the risks posed simultaneously to the same receptor. Decision