Environmental Guidance
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Nickel Magazine, June 2007 -- A new document provides good practices for assessing the environmental risk of metals. More and more businesses that either produce materials or manufacture products are carrying out site-specific environmental risk assessments. In doing so, they often arrive at inappropriate assessments for metals because the tools they use were intended for organic chemicals. Three years ago, the International Council on Mining & Metals and Eurometaux addressed the problem by bringing together several leading independent scientists. The United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) endorsed the scientists’ recommendations and subsequently helped establish a 21-member scientific review panel. Defra also introduced the initiative to national authorities in Canada, the United States and the European Union. In March 2007 the panel published a summary document, “Metals Environmental Risk Assessment Guidance,” accompanied by a series of fact sheets on risk characterization, exposure assessment, effects assessment, marine risk assessment, bio-availability, uncertainty analysis, and classification. Together, these shed valuable light on the most recent scientific concepts that apply to the ecological risk assessment of metals. The 80-page document is aimed at environmental science professionals who are already familiar with the principles of risk assessment and environmental quality criteria. Among the topics addressed are: how environmental risks from metals can be assessed in the most appropriate way, depending on the availability of data; how bio-availability corrections can be incorporated into the process; “probabilistic” risk assessments for data-rich metals (such as nickel); and methodologies for quantifying the uncertainty that is an integral part of any risk assessment process. As regulatory practice and technical understanding evolve, the panel will publish revised fact sheets periodically on a web site. More than 300 scientific references are included in the document, which also notes when and how the data apply to alloys (though this topic is not covered extensively).
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