Keywords
soil management
risk assessment
environmental health
heavy metals
Portman Bay
How to Cite
Abstract
The management of contaminated soils in Spain is mainly based on the concept of unacceptable risk as a legal obligation to protect human health. The analyses and management of the risks in contaminated soils involves a detailed physico-chemical and mineralogical characterisation of the contaminated materials, both at the surface and at depth, as well as of the processes that take place under current and future weathering conditions.
The purposes of this paper is to study the implications of risk assessment for human health in the decision-making for managing the risk of a contaminated soil such that an acceptable/unacceptable risk be decisive in the selection of technologies for remediating said soil for a specic use.
An example of remediation being undertaken in Portman Bay, located in the mining district of La Unión (Murcia, Spain), is given. As a result of the mining waste discharged directly into the bay for more than 30 years, Portman Bay became one of the most contaminated spots in the Mediterranean. From the Roberto washery (the biggest sulphate – pyrite, blende, galena – tailing washery in the world, which treated about 1000 tonnes/day), tailings were discharged by pipe directly into the western part of the bay, from where currents washed them towards the shore. During its service life, the Roberto washery discharged 60 million tonnes of tailings, made up of clay, quartz, siderite, magnetite, and the remains of sphalerite, pyrite and galena, together with metals and residues of the chemical reagents used in oatation. As a result of the dumping, the whole bay lled up with waste, which also extended into the Mediterranean Sea. The most a ected receptors in this area are children, and the most important exposure route is the intake of solid particles, followed by dermal exposure and inhalation. The remediation project is based on the production of ad hoc technosols according to the detected risk.
The articles published in this journal are subject to the following terms and conditions:
- The journal retains copyright of the articles published, and encourages and permits their reuse under the licence indicated at point 2.
- The articles are published in the online edition of the journal under licence Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). They can be copied, used, disseminated, transmitted, and publicly displayed, providing that the authorship, URL address and the Journal are cited, and that no commercial use is made of them.
- The authors agree with terms of licence use of the journal, with the self-archiving conditions and with the open access policy.
- In the event of reuse of the articles published, the existence and specifications of the terms of licence use must be mentioned, in addition to citing the authorship and original source of the their publication.