Remind me again which methodology has a legal basis under Part IIA and will stand up in a court of law? Ah yes none of them
I wouldn't worry about PI cover, if it cant be argued in court that smoking causes cancer then I find it very unlikely that you will be seeing many successful prosecutions for BaP contamination
Risk aversion is the problem here, I would suggest that waiting for the magic answer from DEFRA/EA/HPA/daily mail is not a good idea as this is a political problem not a technical one. The route of the problem is that the HPA and DEFRA are so risk adverse that they dont want to publish anything that may look like concrete advise. Look at the disclaimer for the CLEA model, show that to a lawyer and see how concrete the numbers are that come out of it.
"The CLEA guidance describes the soil concentrations above which, in the opinion of the Environment Agency, there may be concern that warrants further investigation and risk evaluation for both threshold and non-threshold substances. These levels area a guide to help assessors estimate risk. It does not provide a definitive test for telling when risks are significant"
So what exactly is CLEA useful for other then indicating that un specified further assessment is required? Also what further risk evaluation can be done, I thought the point of DQRA was to do the risk evaluation. I can only assume that by putting in the further evaluation statement the EA are eluding to a qualitative assessment of the results, which goes something like
"a value of 0.85mg/kg for BaP has been generated by CLEA, however because of the conservatism expressed in the model then it is unlikely that this represents the level at which significant risk of significant harm, therefore if BaP is detected at levels above this value on a site then remediation is not necessarily required"
If this is what is being eluded to then this makes doing DQRA a bit irrelevant. And who is accountable at the end of the day? The consultant will have a disclaimer that says risk assessment is carried out in accordance with guidance from the EA/DEFRA, the LA will say they assessed the consultants report in accordance with the same guidance, the guidance meanwhile has a disclaimer saying that its up to the LA and consultant to determine if the level of risk is significant. So who in this loop is actually accountable?
To get some context, recently there has been a lot of press about acrylamide in fried food, I have looked this up on IRIS and the USEPA slope factor converted at 1 in 100,000 (i.e 10E-5) gives an oral ID of 2.2E-6 mg/kg/Bw. This value is lower than that given for BaP, and the compound is found in any fried food you eat so the exposure is likely to be greater. So are fried foods banned? Does the HPA advise that eating Pringles is an unacceptable risk to human health? No the food standards agency says that people have been eating fried foods for a long time, and more research needs to be done.
Perhaps you are eating some crisps right now...If you are interested in accessing the potential unacceptable risk to human health from eating Pringles on a saturday night then here is the link
Im off to eat some crisps and my home grow vegetables, just cant decide which one poses the greatest risk to me, anyone got a number for a crisp diffusion coefficient I can put in CLEA?
Steve
I agree with Duncan's eloquently argued statements. As I see it the voluminous
documents with the new CLEA permit the use of other countries lists (with a similar approach) and
those of the American EPA but not the SGVs from the previous two CLEAs which leaves things fairly wide open.
The situation with lead as has been raised which was not a CLEA level is problematic.
It is therefore in my view necessary to justify any limit used for assessment in reports until sometime
in the far distant future the murk clears and a definitive system is in place.
The fact that the SGVs are being referred to as trigger levels will leave the presumed next step, "action" levels
for future generations to consider. Almost back to ICRCL.
regards
Albert prince
Geo-Environmental Investigations Ltd
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