A regional chemical fate and exposure model suitable for Denmark and its coastal sea

M. Severinsen, M.B. Andersen, F. Chen, N. Nyholm

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    A generic screening level model for the regional environmental fate and exposure of industrial organic chemicals has been developed for Denmark and its coastal sea. The model is a further development of a European generic model proposed by the Commission of the European Union (EU) for use in chemical risk assessment. The EU model is a 'Mackay-type' level III model with four compartments: air, soil, freshwater and freshwater sediments. To better represent the geography of Denmark that consists of islands and a peninsula a six-compartment model was constructed by adding a seawater compartment and a marine sediment compartment to the standard EU-model. To obtain a realistic mean hydraulic retention time of freshwater, the freshwater compartment was reduced to represent lakes only, treating emissions to rivers downstream lakes as emissions directly to the sea. The sea compartment was confined to the transition between the Baltic and the North Sea that receives the major part of the Danish wastewater discharges and is a physically well-defined entity. Case studies with lindane, chloroform, pentachlorophenol (PCP), hexachlorobenzene, linear alkyl benzene sulphonates (LAS), 1-dodecanol, and trichlorethylene (TCE) demonstrated that in scenarios with significant local waterborn emission of volatile compounds predictions with the six compartment model could be significantly different from those obtained with the standard EU model. For LAS, lindane, PCP, TCE and chloroform, limited sets of available monitoring data were in fair agreement with model predictions. A sensitivity analysis showed among others that the local emissions as well as the imports across the model boundary were important determinants. A tentative risk assessment based on regional PEC (predicted environmental concentration)/PNEC (predicted no effect concentration) ratios indicated that there should be no environmental risk at the regional scale for chloroform, PCP; and TCE in Denmark. For LAS the calculated PEC/PNEC ratios were between 2-18% for soil, water and sediment when EU standard assessment factors were used to estimate the PNEC.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalChemosphere
    Volume32
    Issue number11
    Pages (from-to)2159-2175
    ISSN0045-6535
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1996

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