Risk management of chemicals and contaminated land – from planning to verification - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 230

strategy in many cases. Not dealing with workplace risk and letting the workers
suffer from the consequences, or not wearing protective clothing, or not accepting
restrictions (e.g., many people around Chernobyl refused to leave their houses
after the accident) should be rejected. Finding a healthy level of acceptance is in
close relationship with avoiding and controlling risk;
- Risk transfer can be an efficient option between subsystems if it mitigates the
overall risk of the system. However, risk is often transferred in an unacceptable way
between comparable systems, frequently causing mismanagement of contaminated
land and solid wastes. “Dig and dump'' of contaminated soil is one example,
which has been applied for many years and it is still practised in many countries.
The contaminated soil is excavated and transported from one location to another,
which in itself poses high risk to the environment. The dumping site may be more
sensitive than the original location, thus the risk increases. Waste disposal as a
whole is accompanied with high environmental risk, and therefore, the importance
of getting higher in the waste hierarchy is obvious in this respect. Narrow-minded
thinking may lead to the transfer of environment-damaging mining and industrial
activities to third world countries, causing higher global risk due to less stringent
environmental requirements in the recipient countries;
- Knowledge, research, and innovation are mentioned here as a technique for
strengthening other RMOs and RR technologies to create a better solution today
than the best available one yesterday. Risk management is a dynamic activity,
which continuously integrates new scientific knowledge and technical innovations.

There are numerous RR options for every contamination case, and the managers
should find and choose the best available and best suiting method for application.
Innovative or entirely new technologies or the combination of an increasing number
of alternatives are applied which need special evaluation. The RR alternatives can be
regulatory provisions or technology applications. Regulatory tools include preventive
and/or restrictive measures, including prohibitions, bans, or obligations to apply pre-
ventive and protective technologies. Both regulatory and technological tools may be
applied:

- Restricting the amount of chemicals produced or used or by reducing emissions

at the origin (source) of the risk such as the use of chemicals in industry, emission
from technologies or from waste disposal sites. It is worth differentiating between
'in-pipe' and 'end-of-pipe' emission control.

- Using permeable reactive barriers or treatment ponds along the transport pathway

in the environment to treat contaminated runoff water or groundwater;

- Restrictions (protective clothing at workplaces, prohibition of certain land uses,

e.g., no entry, no swimming, etc.) or remediation by water and soil treatment
technologies in the environment already damaged.

The best possible RR option can be selected after assessing the risk and determining
the environmental target as well as after a thorough evaluation of the alternatives from
technological, environmental, economic and social aspects. These evaluations can be
made at a local, watershed-, regional, or global scale.