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摘要:
In North America, numerous aquifers as fresh drinking water supply sources have been contaminated from various sources such as septic systems, leaking underground storage tanks, spills or improper disposal of industrial chemicals, and leachate from solid and hazardous waste landfills. A major task associated with the contamination of aquifers is to develop effective tools to assess and determine the health risks to individuals potentially consuming the water from these aquifers. This poses many obstacles due to the complexity of the environment that the contaminant is spilled in and the population consuming the water. This paper presents a Monte Carlo simulation based methodology which is capable of considering many variations present in the natural environment and human populations. The methodology is tested using a hypothetical aquifer and population case. Downgradient contaminant concentrations resulting from a leaking underground storage tank, containing petroleum, are calculated using an analytical solution to the two-dimensional advection-dispersion transport model. Contaminants under consideration include benzene, toluene, and ethylbenzene (BTE) which can cause deleterious health effects. Parameters and variables in the model are considered as random numbers. Contaminant ingestion dose is calculated using the stochastic exposuredose model. Random population variables are used to give a distribution for contaminant ingestion dose for each contaminant. The chronic non-cancer hazard index is used to determine the risk associated with the ingestion of non-carcinogenic contaminants. The cancer risk is calculated using the slope factor, given by the USEPA, for the carcinogenic contaminants. Results of the case study indicate that environmental health risks can be effectively analyzed through the developed methodology. They are useful for supporting the related risk-management and remediation decisions. © 2012 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
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