Scientific and engineering improvement of environmental risk management - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 397

- ROST-LIF (rapid optical screening tool with laser-induced fluorescence) techniques

for metals and hydrocarbons are quick and low-cost tools, with good accuracy,
selectivity and sensitivity;

- MIP (membrane interface probe) coupled with gas chromatography (GC) in con-

junction with FID is able to serve with good spatial information on volatile and
semivolatile organic contaminants in underground environment, even in deep
soils. Its analytical accuracy is poor, and it can be considered as semiquantitative
analytical method with low selectivity.

Traditional analytical methods running in chemical laboratories are better in sen-
sitivity, selectivity and accuracy, but these advantages are highly corrupted by the
uncertainties in sampling caused by environmental heterogeneities and imperfect sam-
pling plans and techniques. Using in situ measuring devices, both of these errors can be
minimized by immediate and in situ evaluation of the measurement results and mak-
ing the decision on the selection of the next measurement point. Site assessment using
this in situ test strategy may substitute and be superior in quality to two traditional
sampling campaigns and the connected high-cost laboratory analyses.
Of course, laboratory sample preparation and analyses cannot be replaced by the
rapid, in situ measurement tools; both of them should find their role in environmental
management practice. Traditional methods can provide highly selective and sensitive
analytical results and can go down to ppt concentrations in environmental samples,
which may be necessary in many cases when emerging, low concentration contami-
nants must be identified and also when the result should be compared to legal quality
criteria.

7 TRENDS IN ENVIRONMENTAL RISK AND IMPACT
ASSESSMENT-LIFE CYCLE THINKING

Risk assessment is one of the interpretation methodologies which can provide useful
information for decision making from assessment data. The concept of risk assess-
ment may be varied depending on the scope of the management task. It may start with
the hazard assessment of any hazardous agents, e.g., chemical substance and progress
toward the environmental compartments and the endangered receptors in the course
of calculation of the quantitative risk value as shown in Figure 8.5 in Chapter 8. The
inverse concept starts with the receptor gathering all the possible impacts (Figure 8.6
in Chapter 8) affecting it. The impacts can be classified and qualified by scores (com-
pared to a reference quality or a relative scale), resulting at the end in a certificate
(e.g., excellent, good, acceptable, inacceptable) or a percentage value; the necessary
interventions are assigned to defined bands of the relative scale in this case. In a third
concept, none of the references has a specific quantitative value. In such a case, a
relative scale of the impacts is used for the comparative evaluation of existing options
(alternative technologies, alternative products). Environmental impact assessment and
life cycle assessment of products apply this concept (Figure 8.7 in Chapter 8).
These different evaluation concepts cover different areas of environmental manage-
ment and sooner or later they must be integrated with each other and with the economic