Contamination and Remediation - Essay Example

Jackson and Lesage (1992) found that risks and threats to the environment and human health include corrosiveness, explosiveness, toxicity, combustibility and carcinogenicity. A site can also be called contaminated if an identified part of land has a higher identified contaminant in concentrations compared to the level of concentrations in a land that is non-contaminated. In the present era, site contamination has become a real issue as it produces various critical impacts regarding environment, water, human health, and economy of any specific country.

Contamination of sites has become a problem due to increased redevelopment of agricultural and industrial land. Assessment of a contaminated site is usually done by using a five-staged approach. The five stages include preliminary site assessment, detailed site assessment, remedial action plan, remediation of the site, and validation of the remediation process. In preliminary site assessment, inspection of the site is conducted in collaboration with the site management staff including owner of the land.

Site history review is done by the inspection team and some samples of soil of the suspected site are also taken by the team in order to prepare an initial report which comes in use if symptoms of site contamination are found in the results of the report. Then in the next stage, comprehensive and detailed assessment of the collected soil samples is done in order to know the extent of presence of hazardous substances in the soil. The results of the assessed samples indicate whether the site actually needs a remediation process or not.

If the results are positive, the inspection team moves towards the third stage which is remedial action plan stage. In this stage, planning is done regarding the suitable remediation process by analyzing the site remediation strategies and actual contaminated area of the site. Human