The vision of CRC CARE’s Risk Assessment Program is to provide a safer and more sustainable environment through a contemporary risk assessment framework by developing cutting edge monitoring and biological effect measurement technologies.

This program will develop more reliable methods and technologies for assessing the risk associated with environmental contamination. This provides a sound basis for management decisions about whether remediation or management is required, the nature of the remediation and whether its outcomes are acceptable.

The Risk Assessment Program includes five subprograms:

• Reliable and acceptable techniques and technologies to quantify the risk associated with contamination in soil, groundwater, surface water and air
• Methods for speciation, bioavailability and toxicity assessment of contaminants
• Exposure pathway and biological effect assessment
• Risk characterisation and communication
• Epidemiological and demographical studies focusing on the effect of point source air emissions associated with major industrial centres.

The program will develop:

• more easily applied, reliable and acceptable techniques and monitoring tools for assessing the risk (e.g. bioavailability and toxicity) from contamination in soil and groundwater, and in affected surface water and air
• better techniques for quantifying the extent of exposure that can be expected to occur and the fate of contaminants over the period that is relevant (e.g. a lifetime or a shorter period, depending on the contaminant).

The research targets groups of contaminants that pose major soil, air and groundwater problems in Australia, or may pose a threat from terrorism activities.