Abstract
Development of petroleum industries is associated with a number of environmental concerns. Among them, soil and groundwater contamination by petroleum products is of major concern. In this study an integrated risk assessment approach is proposed for evaluating environmental risks derived from petroleum-contaminated sites. The proposed approach is composed of (i) a hydrocarbon spill screening model (HSSM) which is used for simulating immisicible flow of released hydrocarbons in vadose zone, formation of lens in capillary fringe, dissolution of pollutants at water table, and transport of the pollutants to receptors, and (ii) a fuzzy relation analysis (FRA) model which is developed for comprehensively evaluating risks caused by a number of pollutants with different impact characteristics, based on the HSSM results. This hybrid HSSM-case FPA approach was applied to a study for a petroleum-contaminated site in western Canada, where soil and groundwater was contaminated by industrial wastes containing benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEXs). The results suggest that the HSSM-FRA can provide insight into the potential risk to the receptor of concern downward the acquifer and can serve as a basis for further remediation-related decision analysis.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 131-138 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Water Science and Technology |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue number | 4-5 -5 pt 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2 Dec 1998 |
| Externally published | Yes |
| Event | Proceedings of the 1998 19th Biennial Conference of the International Association on Water Quality. Part 1 (of 9) - Vancouver, Can Duration: 21 Jun 1998 → 26 Jun 1998 |