Health risk assessment for multimedia exposure of formaldehyde emitted by chemical accident
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Health risk assessment for multimedia exposure of formaldehyde emitted by chemical accident Si-Hyun Park 1 & Hui-Been Lim 1 & Hyong-Jin Hong 1 & Hee-Seok Kim 2 & Dan-Ki Yoon 1 & Hye-Won Lee 1 & Hye-Kwan Kong 1 & Jeong-In Jeon 1 & Ji-Won Choi 3 & Eun-Min Cho 1 & Yong-Sung Cho 4 & Cheol-Min Lee 1,2 Received: 8 June 2020 / Accepted: 23 October 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This study was conducted to provide basic data for chemical accident response by assessing the health risks of residents living near a chemical accident site due to long-term exposure. The study considered the temporal concentration changes of the leaked chemical (i.e., its behavior in the environment and dilution) until its extinction. A virtual chemical accident was assumed, in which 40 t of formaldehyde was accidentally discharged for 1 h in Ulsan Metropolitan City, Korea. Formaldehyde concentrations over time in each environmental medium after the accident were calculated using a multimedia environmental dynamics model. Exposure subjects divided into four age groups were considered. Carcinogenic risks due to respiration and non-carcinogenic risks due to soil intake were assessed. For all the age groups, the excess cancer risk did not exceed 1.0 × 10−6, indicating that no harmful health impact was caused by inhalation exposure to formaldehyde. The hazard index exceeded 1 for all the age groups, confirming that harmful health impacts were caused by exposure to soil containing the formaldehyde. This study is the first to assess chronic health risks by reflecting long-term residual and temporal concentration changes of a pollutant released in a chemical accident in each environmental medium until its extinction. This work is also significant in that it reflects the exposure characteristics of the toxic chemical. Keywords Chemical accident . Health risk assessment . Multimedia exposure . Formaldehyde . Chronic exposure . Environmental dynamic model
Introduction Chemicals have contributed significantly to improving the quality of life of humans by serving as a driving force for economic development and industrialization in modern society. Thus far, approximately 133 million chemicals have been registered with the Chemical Abstract Service, and 15,000 Responsible Editor: Lotfi Aleya * Cheol-Min Lee [email protected] 1
Department of Nano & Biological Engineering, SeoKyeong University, Seoul 02713, Korea
2
Environmental Planning Institute, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
3
Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering, SeoKyeong University, Seoul, Korea
4
Accident Coordination and Training Division, National Institute of Chemical Safety, Daejeon, Korea
chemicals continue to be added every day (Lee et al. 2018). According to the 2016 survey on chemicals conducted by the Ministry of Environment (MoE) of South Korea, 558.59 MT of 16,874 chemicals were used at 21,911 companies handling chemicals. Compared to 2014, the manufactured,
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