Health risk assessment of contaminated sediments

This paper presents an overview of the process used to assess potential health risks associated with sediment contamination. Risk assessment assists project managers from industry and regulatory agency staff in the prioritization of risk management actions involving remediation. Risk assessment evaluates the potential of a project to generate health risks in the future so that preventative management decisions can be made today. Risk assessment results are used to determine whether remedial action is warranted, and if so, to focus remediation efforts onto only those chemicals and sedimentary deposits that are likely responsible for the majority of any potential risks. In this way, risk assessment provides the technical basis for risk-based decision-making, in which limited resources (such as time and funding) may be allocated wisely. Risk assessment can also be used to assess the protectiveness of various remedial alternatives during a project's corrective-measures design phase, such as selecting the most appropriate location for placement of dredged materials. This paper discusses hazard identification, exposure assessment, toxicity assessment, and risk characterization, and their applications to the evaluation of contaminated sediments.