The Human Health Risk Assessment Based on Process Simulation and Uncertainty Analysis

Abstract

Water resource is an important part of human living and production. With the modernization of cities, the problem of groundwater contamination is becoming more and more serious. It is outstanding to effectively assess the risk of groundwater contamination to human health. This paper proposes a human health risk assessment method based on the simulation of contaminant transport process and parameter uncertainty analysis. The method combines health risk assessment with groundwater contaminant transport processes and applies the TOUGH2 program to simulate the temporal and spatial distribution of contaminant in groundwater. In order to improve the accuracy of the assessment results, the influence of the uncertainty of the transport model on human health risk assessment is taken into account. And the key parameter (e.g., the permeability) of the transport model is inversed by Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation method. Based on a sandbox experiment, the human health risk exposed to a typical dense non-aqueous phase liquids contaminant tetrachloroethylene (PCE) is evaluated by considering the parameter uncertainty of the PCE transport model, which confirmed that the method can provide decision-making information for the management and prevention of contaminated sites.