Environmental Risk Assessment

Increasingly, in the world today, there are many situations where the potential adverse effects on human health and the environment must be considered prior to the commencement of a project. The usual way these effects are examined is through the use of an Environmental Risk Assessment to ensure that site-specific risks and hazards are acceptable.

Assessment of environmental risk is a complex subject, which is incorporated into European and UK legislation and statutory guidance documents. It is a process used to answer three questions:

• What can go wrong?

• What is the likelihood and severity of any adverse occurrence?

• What can be done to manage any significant adverse occurrence and who should be involved?

REC is renowned for it’s expertise in the field of contaminated land, whether it is with regard to property, human health, ecology or controlled waters and regularly carries out Environmental Risk Assessments on behalf of clients.

Who needs an Environmental Risk assessment?
Environmental Risk Assessments are a legal requirement for an activity that could potentially cause damage to the environment or to human health. Environmental Risk Assessments can be applied to:

• Air Quality

• Redevelopment of brown field sites

• Contaminated Land issues

• Ecological Risks

• Mergers and Acquisitions

• Radiological risks

• Health Risk from Incinerators Industrial Processes

How are Risk Assessments carried out?

There are two types of assessments, qualitative and quantitative. The ability to consistently screen all risks qualitatively is vitally important as it can determine the environmental priorities. In the past there has been a tendency to apply quantitative methods from the outset and ignore significant issues that may be difficult to quantify.

For quantitative assessments, REC employs a range of appropriate software packages to model the environmental scenario from source to receptor to give output concentrations for comparison with legislative limits.

Typical software packages employed by REC for Environmental Risk Assessments are:

• CLEA and SNIFFER to model the effect on human health from soil.

• CONSIM, and EA R&D P20 for simulating contamination to controlled waters.

• RBCA to model the effect on human health from contaminated groundwater and soil, and vapour inhalation

Why choose REC?

• Experience of risk assessments in a wide variety of situations, enables us to choose the most practical solutions.

• REC offers a fully independent service, operating out of several regional offices.

• Proven resolutions with regulatory bodies.

• REC is a one-stop shop for all Geo-Environmental and Air Quality issues.

• We have UKAS laboratory facilities provided by our sister company.

• Value and quality of service.