Assessment of Health Risk due to Contaminated Soil and Remediation Techniques - A Case Study

摘要

The rapid growth of industrialization, urbanization and use of pesticides in agricultural field has been causing land contamination. The industrial disaster took place on December 2, 1984 at Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal. Many casualties occurred during this tragedy. Due to leakage of methyl isocyanate (MIC), not only the land in and around the factory premises but also groundwater got contaminated. The effects of heavy metals (arsenic, chromium, lead and mercury) present in the soils of plant area on the human being were studied. For this, the exposure pathways (direct and indirect soil ingestion; inhalation and dermal contacts) through which human being could be effected was considered. The age group (16-59 years), body weights, respiration rate, etc were also taken into account. The carcinogenicity classification values for each heavy metal were obtained from USEPA's Integrated Risk and Information System (IRIS). Dose intakes of contaminated soil were calculated using CLEA model. The concentrations of heavy metals of gas plant area were taken from the CSE Report, 2009. The cumulative average daily exposure (ADE) indicated that arsenic and chromium have higher risks to the receptors as these can cause carcinogenic problems. Lead and mercury have also higher exposure value compared to reference value, which can cause diseases like failure of nervous system, liver, kidney etc. The remediation techniques of the heavy metals from the contaminated soils have also been focused in this paper.