Risk Assessments of Exposure to Airborne Volatile Organic Compounds in Gumi Industrial Complex Areas, Korea

초록

This paper carried out the lifetime risk assessment of exposure to airborne volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in environmental atmosphere in one Korean industrial city‐Gumi based on the measured concentrations of VOCs at five representative outdoor monitoring sites. According to the measured VOCs concentration, toluene, trichloroethylene and dichloromethane are three main VOCs in Gumi. The carcinogenic risks for each of the carcinogenic VOCs in all five designated sites are more than the benchmark concentration (1.0E‐6). Particularly, the LCR in industrial complex1 and 2 reach 9.64E‐5 and 1.32E‐4 respectively, which are far higher than the benchmark risks. The predominant risks in industrial areas are chloroform, benzene and trichloroethylene, while the predominant risks in other sites are benzene and chloroform and their contributions to cancer risk are not less than 90%. For non carcinogenic VOCs, the total hazard indices in 5 monitored sites are less than 1. The hazard index in No.2 industry complex is the highest among 5 sites which is up to 0.663 where the contribution of 1, 2‐dichloropropane is up to 50% (0.335). Based on the analysis in this paper, effectively decreasing the emission of chloroform, benzene, Trichloroethylene and 1,2‐dichloropropane will rapidly reduce the cancer risks and hazard indices in Gumi.

키워드