Health risks of organic contaminated soil in an out-of-service oil refinery site

Abstract

Health risks assessment due to exposure to organic contaminated soil at an oil refinery out of service is conducted in this study by integrating health risk methods of U.S. EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency), ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) and VROM (Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment in Netherlands), with the localized parameters using Chinese demographic characteristics and site features. The monitoring results show that the concentration of benzene, benzo(a)pyrene and benzo(a)anthracene in the soil of the site all exceed their risk screening values, respectively, with pollutants concentrated in soil 0.1–5.5 m beneath the surface. To estimate health risks of the site with the 95% upper confidence limit of the pollution, we focus on three major exposure pathways, namely, oral ingestion, dermal contact and breath inhalation, which indicates carcinogenic risk (CR) and non-carcinogenic hazard quotient (HQ) of the contaminated soil reach 9.59×10⁻⁵ and 15.46, respectively, exceeding the acceptable level of 10⁻⁵ and 1, posing severe health hazards to the residents at the site.

Keywords

contaminated site health risk / soil / organic contamination

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