Vapor Intrusion Assessments: Can You Trust Your Indoor Air Data?

Written by Jeff Carnahan, LPG, Senior Project Manager, EnviroForensics in collaboration with Stephen R. Henshaw, PG, President & CEO, EnviroForensics.

f you’ve ever had to hire an environmental consultant to investigate your property and collect samples, you’ve probably had to look at an analytical report from a laboratory and use it to answer some pretty important questions.  Is there contamination on my property? What chemicals are present? How much is there?  Most importantly, are the levels of contamination high enough to be causing harmful health effects? Only slightly less importantly, are they high enough to require a costly cleanup?  You needed to know the answers to all of these questions so that you could sell or buy a property, get a business loan, or maybe just to sleep at night.  With today’s trend of highly regulated vapor intrusion (VI) assessments being required at sites where dry cleaning with perchloroethene (PCE) has taken place, these questions have become increasingly important and more difficult to answer. Read more »

Indiana Department of Environmental Management to Present Remediation Closure Guide and Remediation Program Guide to the Indiana Solid Waste Management Board

At 1:30 pm today, Tuesday February 21, 2012, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) intends to present its Remediation Closure Guide and Remediation Program Guide to the Indiana Solid Waste Management Board.  This will mark the final step in the two-year process undertaken by IDEM, with private industry input, to overhaul their subsurface environmental investigation and remediation Non-Rule Policy guidance. 

The soon to be replaced Risk Integrated System of Closure, or RISC program, has been in effect since February 2001 and has provided default cleanup levels for soil and groundwater in both residential and commercial/industrial scenarios in cookbook fashion.  Groundwater levels were established largely on health-based levels deemed safe for human consumption in residential and industrial exposure scenarios.  Soil levels were established primarily on the most conservative of direct contact, ingestion or migration to groundwater pathways, the latter of which was typically selected as default. Read more »

Vapor Intrusion Assessments: Can You Trust Your Indoor Air Data?

Written by Jeff Carnahan, L.P.G, Senior Project Manager, EnviroForensics in collaboration with Stephen Henshaw, P.G., President & CEO, EnviroForensics.

If you’ve ever had to hire an environmental consultant to investigate your property and collect samples, you’ve probably had to look at an analytical report from a laboratory and use it to answer some pretty important questions.  Is there contamination on my property? What chemicals are present? How much is there?  Most importantly, are the levels of contamination high enough to be causing harmful health effects? Only slightly less importantly, are they high enough to require a costly cleanup?  You needed to know the answers to all of these questions so that you could sell or buy a property, get a business loan, or maybe just to sleep at night.  With today’s trend of highly regulated vapor intrusion (VI) assessments being required at sites where dry cleaning with perchloroethene (PCE) has taken place, these questions have become increasingly important and more difficult to answer.

While there are challenges associated with environmental assessments of all kinds; determining the level of hazardous constituents in a building’s indoor air, assessing from where it may have come and evaluating if an unacceptable health risk exists for human occupants can be particularly delicate.  For those property owners who need answers to the questions posed in the situation above, it is extremely important that samples of indoor air collected during VI assessments are representative of the air actually being breathed by the building’s occupants and that the laboratory results can be relied upon.  Read more »

EPA Officially Characterizes Perchloroethylene as ‘Likely Human Carcinogen’

Written by John Bird, P.G., Vice President, EnviroForensics.

On Friday, February 10, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published the final health assessment for perchloroethylene (Perc) to the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) database.  EPA’s IRIS is a human health assessment program that evaluates risk information on effects that may result from exposure to environmental contaminants.   Perc is a chemical solvent widely used in the dry cleaning industry.  This health assessment appears to confirm longstanding scientific understanding and research, that Perc is a “likely human carcinogen.”  For the first time, the EPA provides estimates for both cancer and non-cancer effects associated with exposure to Perc over a lifetime.

It’s important to note that the EPA does not believe that wearing clothes dry cleaned with perc will result in exposures which pose a risk of concern.  EPA has already taken several significant actions to reduce exposure to Perc. EPA has clean air standards for dry cleaners that use Perc, including requirements that will phase-out the use of Perc by dry cleaners in residential buildings by December 21, 2020. EPA also set limits for the amount of Perc allowed in drinking water and levels for cleaning up Perc at Superfund sites throughout the country, which will be updated in light of the IRIS assessment. Read more »