Ecological risk based remediation goal strategies: An overview
- IT Corp., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Establishing ecological risk-based cleanup goals is essential to linking the protection of the environment to remedial actions and is the leading edge of technology development in ecological risk assessment. Unlike the discipline of human health risk assessment, standards, criteria and/or guidance related to the derivation of ecological remediation goals are currently inadequate or nonexistent. United States Environmental Protection Agency water and sediment quality criteria are commonly used as remediation goals for aquatic environments. Toxicity-based benchmark screening values, and environmental media concentrations from reference or investigation sites where no adverse ecological impacts have been documented through field surveys or toxicity testing have also served as ecological risk-based clean-up goals. In addition, background concentrations and human health risk-based remediation goals are frequently used as default values for the protection of the environment. Unfortunately, in the process, of setting cleanup criteria, the physical disturbance of habitat resulting from remediation is often neglected. The absence of definitive remediation values or standardized methodologies for the determination of such criteria poses problems both to the ecological risk assessor involved in setting goals to protect biota and for the engineers involved in the remediation process. This presentation will provide a brief overview of various methods used to derive ecological risk-based cleanup goals.
- OSTI ID:
- 353494
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-970677-; TRN: IM9929%%40
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 90. annual meeting and exhibition of the Air and Waste Management Association, Toronto (Canada), 8-13 Jun 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of 1997 proceedings of the Air and Waste Management Association`s 90. annual meeting and exhibition; PB: [7000] p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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