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INTEGRATED MULTIMEDIA DECISION-MAKING FOR HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT: A NATIONAL-SCALE STUDY OF LAND APPLICATION OF ARSENIC-BEARING WASTES
Citation:
BABENDREIER, J. E. INTEGRATED MULTIMEDIA DECISION-MAKING FOR HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT: A NATIONAL-SCALE STUDY OF LAND APPLICATION OF ARSENIC-BEARING WASTES. Presented at International Conference on Environmental Epidemiology and Exposure, Paris, FRANCE, September 02 - 06, 2006.
Impact/Purpose:
The primary goals are to: (1) Construct a 400-node PC-based supercomputing cluster supporting Windows and Linux computer operating systems (i.e. SuperMUSE: Supercomputer for Model Uncertainty and Sensitivity Evaluation); (2) Develop platform-independent system software for the management of SuperMUSE and parallelization of EPA models and modeling systems for implementation on SuperMUSE (and other PC-based clusters); (3) Conduct uncertainty and sensitivity analyses of the 3MRA modeling system; (4) Develop advanced algorithmic software for advanced statistical sampling methods, and screening, localized, and global sensitivity analyses; and (5) Provide customer-oriented model applications for probabilistic risk assessment supporting quality assurance in multimedia decision-making.
Description:
Requisite to the development and application of sound waste management policies, decision-makers must discern the impact of a given waste management approach upon both human and ecological receptors. To configure such policies solely upon the assessment of impact to humans, for example, may result in unacceptable risk to ecological receptors. Historically, intuition reflecting the most likely affected community and exposure pathway of concern has guided the focus of risk assessments upon one or the other class of receptors. Presumably, this has been well founded for single-medium assessments in light of relative toxicity for a given contaminant and location of receptors at a given site. For many contaminants though, it is actually the case that significant risks are presented to both receptor classes, expressed through a variety of media/pathway exposures, where significance depends upon a host of decision variables the decision-maker must consider and ultimately set for a given policy (e.g., distance from source, acceptable risk level, and % population protected). In this work, using 3MRA and associated national, regional, and site-based data sets, an assessment of risks to human and ecological receptors is considered for land application of Arsenic-bearing wastes across the conterminous United States.