Emissie en verspreiding van geur en toxische stoffen inde omgeving van de Tweede en Derde Merwedehaven te Dordrecht en de hiermee samenhangendegezondheidsaspecten

摘要

Public concern about potential health effects triggered an extensivestudy into the emissions in an industrial area in Dordrecht. This areahouses such structures as an industrial waste dump, a chemical plant, awaste incinerator, a sewage treatment plant and several other industrialplants, emitting mainly VOCs, combustion compounds, odourous components(such as hydrogen sulphide) and heavy metals. As a first step, data fromemission inventories and emission measurements were used for dispersionmodelling; the resulting environmental exposure data were then comparedto - health based - guidelines for air quality. In addition, amonitoring programme was started to measure long-term average and hourlyconcentrations of several relevant compounds in ambient air. The resultsserved primarily to support the technical assumptions of the dispersionmodel. Among the conclusions the most important were found to be: 1)that the results of the measurements and the dispersion modelcalculations were consistent in showing that environmental exposurelevels of the emitted contaminants did not even come close tointernational guidelines for the prevention of long-term health effects; 2) that modelling of odour concentrations demonstrated that odournuisance could not be excluded, in spite of previous technical measuresto suppress emissions from the waste dump. It was proposed that currenthealth complaints of the exposed population might be shaped by episodesof serious odour annoyance in the past.