Risk management of chemicals and contaminated land – from planning to verification - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 260

- Planning of environmental monitoring to assess and control environmental risks;

- Planning of the RR measure(s);

- Managing hazardous chemicals, hazardous wastes and contaminated land.

Hazard and RA methodologies are of different types, - qualitative or quantita-
tive, generic or site specific, environmental or human health RA -, depending on and
according to the tier and goal of the risk management activity, as well as to the available
data and information (Gruiz, 2009a; Gruiz et al., 2009b).

4.1 Environmental risk assessment
Environmental risk means the probability of undesirable damage occurring due to the
interaction of hazardous substances with the environment. Its characterization includes
the identification, characterization and evaluation of the hazard of the substance and
the sensitivity or the buffering capacity of the environment, as well as the exposure
routes and the response of the receptors (including humans and ecosystem).
Hazard identification is the first stage in hazard assessment and the first step in
the process of risk assessment. It is the identification of the type and nature of adverse
effects that an agent has as inherent capacity to cause in an organism, system or
(sub)population.
Hazard assessment of chemicals, products and wastes means the determination
of hazard types, the environmental fate and behavior of hazardous agents or sub-
stances and their adverse effects. It is advisable to differentiate organic and inorganic
chemicals, mixtures of chemicals, to characterize volatility, water solubility, sorba-
bility, partition between physical phases, dissociation, ionic forms, degradability,
persistency, bioaccumulative potential, physical, chemical and biological hazards,
including toxicity and other adverse effects (mutagenic reprotoxic, endocrine- and
immune-system disruptors, etc.). Fate and effect assessments are discussed at length in
Volume 2.
Step-wise ERA is generally carried out in three tiers: preliminary, detailed and full
risk assessment.

4.1.1 Qualitative RA

Qualitative RA characterizes the source, the contaminants and the environment
without exact quantitative data to support prescreening, comparison or preliminary
ranking. The main goal of screening and ranking in the initial phase of risk man-
agement is to reduce the long lists of problems or cases of different importance and
urgency.
Ranking and screening is necessary in every case when the decision makers have to
manage a large number of problems, chemicals, wastes or contaminated sites simulta-
neously such as national or European management of chemicals (REACH regulation)
or the national remediation programs, where full inventories are the starting points
comprising thousands of alternatives.
Qualitative RA, also called relative RA, results in risk scores, percentages or other
comparative values, which cannot objectively characterize the size of risk, which would
be needed for decision making, but compares the alternatives to each other.