cumulative risk assessment framework for waterborne contaminants累计为水污染物风险评估框架.pdfVIP

Journal of Environmental Protection, 2012, 3, 400-413 /10.4236/jep.2012.35050 Published Online May 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jep) Cumulative Risk Assessment Framework for Waterborne Contaminants 1 2 Douglas Crawford-Brown , Sean Crawford-Brown 1Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; 2Cambridge Science and Policy Consulting, Cambridge, UK. Email: djc77@cam.ac.uk Received January 16th, 2012; revised February 26th, 2012; accepted March 27th, 2012 ABSTRACT A framework is developed and applied for semi-quantitative estimation of cumulative risk from complex mixtures of compounds in water supplies. The framework places these risks onto the unifying metric of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), and harmonizes cancer and non-cancer, morbidity and mortality, effects. The framework can be used to: 1) calculate a measure of cumulative risk for a given supply, and compare this measure across supplies or across the same supply with candidate treatments applied; 2) identify those compounds contributing most significantly to cumula- tive risk, so risk management measures can be applied most effectively; and 3) quantify the influence of different regu- latory limits, for specific compounds, on the cumulative risk from drinking water. Results of application to a hypotheti- cal water supply in which all compounds are at their existing Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) show the cumula- tive risk for even a complex mixture may be dominated by a few compounds. In this application, that risk was domi- nated by as few as 10% of the compounds. The analysis also shows that establishing MCLs based on compounds for which there is an oral slope factor, but where no cancer-based limit has yet been established, probably will have little influence on the relative cumulative risk (as measured by Total Weighted DALY) o