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Human health assessment for remediation technologies (HEART): a multi-criteria decision analysis tool

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Abstract

Government of Canada has identified over 22,000 contaminated sites across Canada. Custodians are responsible to manage environmental risks of their sites to human health and the environment  (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat in Federal Contaminated Sites Inventory, 2015) from identifying the contaminants to choosing an optimal remediation technology. Remediation technologies—apart from their initial goal to minimize risk—can have negative impacts on human health; hence, custodians need a tool that helps them manage human health risks of available remediation technologies. Although existing tools consider various criteria (environmental and socio-economic), a tool that specifically evaluates human health risks of remediation technologies may be missing; therefore this study proposes and designs human health assessment for remediation technologies (HEART) and presents a practical example with site-data. HEART estimates human health risks (cancer and non-cancer) associated with remediation techniques and combines them into a single score to help address exposure and human health risks and fulfill custodian need to select and evaluate remedial technologies.

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Notes

  1. The term “standard” generally refers to contamination levels that are enforceable under a regulatory framework. In this case, the term property specific standard was used in the RAP which provided the actual site data. In typical terminology for contaminated sites, this would usually be comparable to a site specific guideline. The terminology from the RAP is preserved here for consistency.

  2. While the worker may visit the site frequently, the actual contact with contaminated soil is considered to be infrequent.

  3. The DST is designed to estimate the health risks based on information provided by the user. The user can specify a less conservative concentration based on the site data.

  4. Including the ingestion and inhalation rate, absorption factor, contact duration, skin surface, body weight, and exposure frequency available in remediation check list tool.

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Acknowledgments

This work was prepared as a part of research contract with Health Canada Prairies region under the supervision of Contaminated Sites (CS) of the Environmental Health Program (EHP) of the Regions and Programs Branch (RAPB). The authors thank and acknowledge Health Canada for their leadership role and data provision. The views and opinions, if any, expressed in this paper and the report does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Health Canada nor is it Health Canada guidance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, University of British Columbia, 1137 Alumni Ave, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7, Canada

    Atousa Soltani, Roberta Dyck, Navid Hossaini, Kasun Hewage & Rehan Sadiq

  2. Environmental Health Program, Regions and Programs Bureau, Suite # 674, 220-4 Avenue SE, Calgary, AB, T2G 4X3, Canada

    Asish Mohapatra

Authors
  1. Atousa Soltani
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  2. Roberta Dyck
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  3. Navid Hossaini
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  4. Asish Mohapatra
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  5. Kasun Hewage
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  6. Rehan Sadiq
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Correspondence to Roberta Dyck.

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Soltani, A., Dyck, R., Hossaini, N. et al. Human health assessment for remediation technologies (HEART): a multi-criteria decision analysis tool. Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag 7, 183–200 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-016-0416-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-016-0416-4

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