Different technologies for the treatment of PAH contaminated sediments and consequences on human health individual risk

Contaminated soils turn out to be a serious public health problem. For this reason, in the present work two aspects are illustrated. The first one regards different techniques for soil/sediment remediation. The sediments taken into account are contaminated by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The second aspect regards the influence of those on individual human health risk. The technologies used in the experimental work are based on chemical and electrochemical oxidation. The considered exposure pathway for the assessment of the individual risk is soil ingestion. A few concentrations of total PAHs and BaP were considered in order to exemplify the influence of different technologies for soil remediation and effects on exposure through the soil ingestion pathway. Assuming that the impacted area could be dedicated to a specific use, ingestion exposure pathway for organic pollutants as PAHs is one of the most significant. Moreover, the ingestion is an essential pathway of exposure considering that B(a)P carcinogenicity for the ingestion exposure pathway is one order of magnitude higher than the one for the inhalation. Based on the results of this study, both chemical oxidation and electrochemical oxidation proved to be effective in the remediation of the sediments of concern. Additionally, the possibility of using the human health risk assessment as a tool in decisional criteria was underlined. The individual risk was assessed considering the HRAIRC software developed through an international PhD and some laboratory analyses performed at the Civil and Environmental Department of the University of Trento, Italy. © 2008 WIT Press.