Health risk assessment and vapor intrusion: a review and Australian perspective

Abstract

Soil contamination by volatile hydrocarbons is of public health importance due to vapor intrusion and indoor inhalation exposures. These are assessed using measurement or predictive modeling and need to consider the key areas of subsurface partitioning and transport, dwelling ventilation, and receptor inhalation dosimetry. While subsurface partitioning and transport have been subject to intensive international investigation, limited consideration has been given to the latter. Building ventilation research has developed multi-zone airflow and contaminant dispersal models including AccuRate, an Australian model that examines natural ventilation modeling, roof and sub-floor ventilation, and identifies the importance of geometry and thermal factors on ventilation (the most sensitive variable) and indoor pollutant concentrations. Inhalation dosimetry has received recent attention due to concerns over child inhalation susceptibility and dose metrics. Research using coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and physiologically based pharmaco-kinetic (PBPK) models has reported variance from previous animal models’ extrapolation while CFD modeling of transient lung vapor absorption suggests the significance of transient versus steady-state evaluation of volatiles absorption into tissue and blood. The transient nature of sub-surface fate and transport, ventilation, and inhalation uptake thus warrants integrated exploration and application in order to realize improvements in vapor intrusion assessments. These perspectives and Australian modeling initiatives are presented in this article.