Assessment of the sanitary and environmental risks posed by a contaminated industrial site

Sites contaminated with hazardous material are a topical and urgent problem all over the world. In accordance with recent Italian regulations, appropriate risk assessment is required in order to determine health risks associated with contaminated sites. The paper presents a case study regarding a disused industrial plant contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls. The site is characterized by three different topographical levels. Therefore both the characterization and the conceptual model had to be adapted to the site conditions: we divided the site into three discrete areas and we developed a separate risk assessment for each area. Besides health risk assessment, we performed ecological risk assessment for both groundwater and surface water targets, as required by Italian regulations. The future reuse scenario has not yet been defined and, consequently, risk assessment results will be useful for the remediation program. Risk assessment was supported by leaching tests and hydrocarbon “finger printing”. Leaching tests allowed us to determine site-specific soil-water partition coefficient. Hydrocarbon “finger printing” allowed us to differentiate the mobility of the different hydrocarbon groups in migration analyses. We found the site required remediation based on Italian standard. We propose a simple risk-based remediation action consisting in the replacement of the upper 1m with “clean” soil and the placement of a barrier to vapors.