Study On Health Risk Assessment Of Air Pollution Accidents

In recent years, many air pollution accidents had occured all over the world. These accidents had caused large-scale pollution of environment and many human casualties.Health risk assessment of air pollution accident is the process to qualitative and quantitative the possible adverse health effects and its hazard probability. Air pollution incidents have the characteristics of short duration and high intensity of damage factor, therefore,the research method of health risk assessment of air pollution accidents was very different from the chronic health risk assessment.The studies related to air pollution accidents were mainly focus on two aspects: accident probability analysis and consequence assessment, public health damage assessment was involved in the process of consequence assessment, but the method of health risk assessment on air pollution accident has not yet been reported.Objective To establish the health risk assessment method for three types of air pollution accidents (hazardous chemical spills, fires and explosions).To analysis the related software development needs.Methods The database used for health risk assessment were established by literature reviewing, internet information searching and field research.Typical air pollution accident cases for three types of air pollution accidents (hazardous chemical spills, fires and explosions) were selected,and the public health risks during the accidents were evaluated according to health risk assessment procedures;the bottleneck problems were discussed and the solution of the problem was explored.Hence the health risk assessment method for air pollution accidents was established.Results:1.The establishment of health risk assessment related databasesThree health risk assessment related databases were establishment:the database of pollutant characteristics,the database of chemical toxicity threshold and model parameters, and the database of typical accident case.Hence the data required for health risk assessment could be conveniently obtained.2.Typical accident cases analysisThe typical accident case analysis shows that:during the process of the health risk assessment of air pollution accidents, the key issue is the lack of damage factor intensity (or concentration) information.This also lead to the health risk assessment results have a greater degree of uncertainty.For chemical spill accidents, in the stage of dose-response relationship evaluation, the results between the two quantitative methods and the two sets of parameters were quite different. Hence, the methods and parameters need to be selected according to the pollutant characteristics of the accident.3.The establishment of human health risk assessment method of air pollution accidentsIn this study, we established the human health risk assessment method of air pollution accidents by consulting to existing research results at home and abroad. In the stage of exposure assessment, the APOPS system was used to obtain the dynamic simulation of the temporal and spatial distribution of damage factors(such as the toxic concentration, thermal radiation, blast wave,etc.);hence the public exposure characteristics was evaluated by combing with local population distribution information.In the stage of dose-response relationship evaluation, the two quantitative methods are used jointly:according to the pollutant characteristics, when the probability equation parameters or a substitute which has the similar physical and chemical and toxicological properties were available, the probability equation method was preferable, and the threshold method was used as a supplement.Otherwise, the threshold method was directly used to assess the public health risk degrees.The parameters provided by two institutions were selected by comparing the degree of compliance between the simulating results and actual consequences.4.Related software development requirements analysisThe software to be developed can be approximately divided into three modules: data input module,health risk assessment module,and output module.Conclusion:The health risk assessment method for air pollution accidents and the related software development can be used conveniently to simulate the public health damage caused by hazard factors (toxic gas inhalation, fire thermal radiation, blast wave, etc.).It can be used to predict public health risk due to the potential accidents, and to assist the relevant government departments and enterprises to formulate targeted emergency plan,organize and train the emergency rescue teams and to keep the relief material reserves.The capacity of emergency response and emergency relief will be effectively improved, the loss will be diminished, and the security of life and property will be protected.