Risk management of chemicals and contaminated land – from planning to verification - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 227

Risk management of chemicals and
contaminated land - from planning to
verification
K. Gruiz 1 ,B. Sára 2 & E. Vaszita 1
1 Department of Applied Biotechnology and Food Science, Budapest University of
Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary
2 PE International Italy S.r.l. Ravenna, Italy
ABSTRACT
Risk-based management of environmental problems requires a careful selection and
planning of the best risk management option, the monitoring of environmental, health,
social and economic impacts, and finally the verification of the applied measures and
technologies. The consecutive selection, planning, implementation, and verification of
regulatory measures or technology applications require a tool battery which is adapted
to the environmental activity to manage. Part of the impacts can be measured and char-
acterized by absolute values such as monetized benefits. Others can be characterized
on a relative scale by comparing them to each other or to a reference value. The eval-
uation can be prospective or retrospective. Verification of an environmental measure
or technology is a generic regulatory process resulting in a certificate for a technology
whose appropriateness and efficacy have been proved in general, or it may refer to a
site-specific application, where the technology has either fulfilled the requirements or
appeared to be capable of achieving the planned target.
This chapter introduces the environmental risk assessment (ERA), socio-economic
assessment (SEA), multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) tools.
These tools are used for the assessment of environmental problems caused by chemical
substances or contaminated sites, for the selection of the best possible risk reduction
measure (comparative evaluation), monitoring the applied measure/technology (main-
taining optimal operation), post-application assessment, and verification of the applied
measure/technology by efficiency assessment and approval.
1 INTRODUCTION, DEFINITIONS
This chapter provides the definition for the evaluation tools applied before, during,
and after implementing risk management of chemicals in the environment and on
contaminated sites focusing on assessing and, if necessary, reducing the unacceptable
scale of risk.
The basic approach in the planning phase is the comparative evaluation of the
predicted impacts of the alternative management options. The aim is to select the opti-
mal option from the point of view of environmental, human health, economic and
social impacts. This prospective evaluation of the potential impacts is based mainly on