| Title: |
Potential health effects of contaminants in Soil - Annexes
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| Resource Type: |
document --> technical publication --> report
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| Country: |
United Kingdom
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| Year: |
2010 |
| Availability: |
SP1002
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| Author 1/Producer: |
Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs - Defra
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| Author / Producer Type: |
Agency, regulator or other governmental or inter-governmental body
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EUGRIS Keyword(s): |
Contaminated land-->Risk assessment-->Receptor: Human health
Contaminated land-->Risk assessment-->Risk assessment overview
Contaminated land-->Risk assessment-->Toxicological information
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| Short description: |
EXTRACT: This research project will address two important issues associated with UK policy on contaminated land. The first is that estimates of risk of health impacts from contaminated land do not quantify the very large uncertainties associated with assessing exposure, calculating dose and inferring potential health impacts. Instead, this uncertainty is compensated through the use of conservative estimates of exposure and the application of uncertainty factors to toxicological data; both approaches aim at yielding a protective estimate of potential health impacts associated with a particular site. The project will analyse uncertainties associated with health impacts from contaminated land and then target quantification of levels of uncertainty for risks associated with a case study contaminant. Results will provide information on the extent to which current risk estimates may be under- or over-protective of human health. They will identify the most important areas of uncertainty and thus help to target data collection and future research activities to reduce uncertainty.
The second issue is that action on health risks associated with contaminated land (i.e. decisions on labelling land contaminated and determining appropriate levels of clean-up) operate in isolation of information on the broader risks to human health. For example, one might hypothesise that total impacts on human health associated with air pollution from road transport are several orders of magnitude larger than those associated with exposure to contaminated land. This might then prompt questions about the relative costs to mitigate health impacts via the two sources and thus inform a debate about the relative costs and benefits of different policy options. The project will generate information on total health impacts from contaminated land and then compare this with health risks from other sources. This will provide a baseline analysis from which policy debate can be initiated.
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Submitted By:
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Professor Paul Bardos WhoDoesWhat?
Last update: 08/12/2010
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