Derivation of Risk-Based Cleanup Levels for Noncarcinogens: Methods and Science Policy Implications. S. Erdal, EA Engineering, Science, and Technology, Inc., 1756 114th Avenue, SE, Suite 132, Bellevue, WA 98004; and I. MacFarlane, EA Engineering, Science, and Technology, Inc., 11019 McCormick Road, Hunt Valley, MD 21031
In the absence of established USEPA protocols for deriving environmental medium-specific risk-based cleanup levels protective of public health at hazardous waste sites, state environmental programs have made policy decisions about the appropriate target risk levels for noncarcinogens in order to set quantitative risk-based cleanup levels. These policy decisions vary from state to state, resulting in differences in the risk-based cleanup levels and costs associated with cleaning a site to these established cleanup levels. As a result, there are two significant outcomes: i) the level that is considered to be protective of human health (or the safe level to which the site should be remediated for future use) varies across the country, with important implications for public health protection; and ii) remediation costs associated with cleaning the site to the health protective level changes across the U.S., with significant implications for the economics of brown fields and residential land development. Here, a case study is presented to demonstrate the numerical differences in risk-based cleanup levels at a petroleum-contaminated site as a result of using different methods and different target risk criteria including the target Hazard Index values for chemicals which cause health effects other than cancer. The potential differences in remediation costs for cleaning the case study site to these different cleanup levels are also briefly discussed.
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