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(52-24) Modelling regional risk assessment of chemicals in European soils. Verdelocco, Stefania*,1, Jones, Arwyn1, Meharg, Andy2, Paya-Perez, Ana1, 1 Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy2 Faculty of Science & Engineering, Aberdeen, UK ABSTRACT- Procedures for a harmonised risk assessment of chemicals in the EU member states are put forward in the Technical Guidance Documents (TGD) on Directive 93/67/EEC and Regulation 1488/94. The EUSES (European System for the Evaluation of Substances) software is a computer programme that contains the mathematical model and calculation processes described in the TGD. The main objective of this project is to develop, implement and validate an informatic application that leads to the creation of a regional risk assessment tool that can be used to evaluate or support policy and management decisions for chemically degraded land in Europe. The methodology used in the project consists of adapting the models contained in EUSES to visualise the spatial component of risk in the soil compartment associated with a particular substance. The approach aims to calculate PEC (Predicted Environmental Concentration) and risk values for a variety of geographic units using real environmental datasets. A sensitivity analysis of EUSES has shown that among the environmental and regional parameters, the main driver of the model is the organic carbon content of soil. The sensitivity analysis showed also that the physico-chemical properties play an important role in defining the partitioning of the substance in the various compartments. These results are critical to deal with the spatial variability and the use of geo-referenced data. The paper will present initial results of the spatial implementation of EUSES for selected test sites in Europe as well as preliminary pan-European risk indices based on the digital European Soil Database. Key words: risk assessment, euses, pec, spatial variability |
