Human Health Risk Assessments

Appropriate risk assessment is key to enabling accurate characterisation of sites, minimisation of remediation costs and discharge of Planning Conditions. Due Dilligence environmental liability audits also require suitable risk assessment in order to determine appropriate action and to determine whether there are cross-boundary contamination issues (subject to legislation such as EPA 1990 Part2A).

GEG’s in-house risk assessors have extensive experience in the use of a variety of risk assessment tools and have derived specific generic soil assessment criteria using CLEA UK in the absence of published soil guidance values (SGV’s). Where required, detailed quantitative risk assessments (DQRA) are subsequently undertaken for human health and are typically undertaken using CLEA UK and the RBCA Toolkit.

Bioaccessibility testing is used, subject to regulatory acceptance, to allow determination of site specific assessment criteria for sites typically naturally elevated in metals such as arsenic, lead etc and often reduce the need for remediation.

Further assessment of the inhalation of volatiles from organic contaminated sites such as petrol stations and gasworks is another area where DQRA can be used to minimise remedial action with respect to protecting human health.

The Environment Agency Remedial Target Methodology and the RBCA Toolkit are routinely used to assess risks to controlled waters and often enable monitoring of natural attenuation to be carried out rather than ground water remediation or significantly reduce the scope of the remedial work.