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 4
subprograms:
-
Reliable and acceptable techniques and
technologies to quantify the risk associated with contamination in
soil, ground water, surface water and air;
-
Methods for speciation, bioavailability
and toxicity assessment of contaminants;
-
Exposure Pathway and Biological Effect
Assessment;
-
Risk Characterisation and
Communication.
The program will develop:
-
more easily applied, reliable and
acceptable techniques and monitoring tools for assessing the risk
(eg bioavailability and toxicity) from contamination in soil and
groundwater, in surface water and air where the contamination may
migrate into these media.
-
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 (eg 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.