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Evaluating Children’s Risk of Infection from Exposure to Municipal Solid Waste Truck Leachate: Complementary Evidence-based and Risk-based Assessmentsby and Comparing Life Cycle and Risk Assessment: Complementary Tools for Management and Policy-Making by Wednesday, January 19, 2005
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Evaluating Children’s Risk of Infection from Exposure to Municipal Solid Waste Truck Leachate: Complementary Evidence-based and Risk-based AssessmentsJo Anne Shatkin, PhD, James Smith, and Nelson Moyer PhD. Summary: In densely populated areas, the trend is for solid waste facilities such as landfills to move increasingly further from the sprawling suburban communities they serve. This trend has increased the development and expansion of transfer facilities in suburban neighborhoods, resulting in increased trucking of municipal wastes near residential areas. People are exposed to leached material from municipal solid waste (MSW) trucks on a daily basis and some of this waste may harbor human pathogens. Children may be especially susceptible to exposure to such waste due to behavior during outdoor play and perhaps due to greater susceptibility to infection. We report on an assessment of the public health risk through exposure to leachate from MSW haulers in two ways: an evidence based approach considering worker exposure to waste and incidence of illness, and by an estimate of exposure to leachate from MSW trucks with loads containing diapers from children with active infections caused by Shigella or Salmonella. Biography: Jo Anne Shatkin is a Principal at The Cadmus Group, Inc., a firm that provides environmental, water and energy consulting services to government and private clients, and a Research Assistant Professor in the Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Shatkin has 18 years of experience in research and application of quantitative human health risk assessment, develop screening level (semi-qualitative) risk assessment protocols and risk-based prioritization approaches, environmental chemistry, assessing chemical bioavailability, multimedia and cumulative risk assessments of novel emerging contaminants and mixtures, models for characterizing and reducing uncertainty in exposure assessment, and in technical support for advisory and stakeholder outreach and communication. She received her Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Policy in 1994 and her MA in Risk Management and Technology Assessment, both from Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts and possesses a Bachelor of Science degree from Worcester Polytechnic University in Biology and Biotechnology. Dr Shatkin has served as Chapter & Section Committee Chair for the Society for Risk Analysis; President of the New England Chapter of the Society for Risk Analysis; Board Member and President of the Regional Environmental Council, a member of the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority Expert Risk Panel, and committee member of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Science Advisory Panel for Solid Waste. Comparing Life Cycle and Risk Assessment: Complementary Tools for Management and Policy-Making Thomas P. Seager, Ph.D. Summary: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for characterizing the resource requirements and environmental discharges associated with material or product use. Ideally, LCA will identify the material and energy requirements and environmental discharges at the earliest stages of economic activity, such as material extraction, through the to final disposition of a product, such as landfill, incineration, or recycle. When aggregated and summarized, the material and energy data is called a life cycle inventory and reported relative to some arbitrary functional unit of economic activity such as per car or per thousand dollars of purchase price. Like risk assessment, the purpose of the LCA is to be able to compare or improve upon the environmental profile or performance of a particular product. Several potentially significant sources of environmental risk may be identified at different life cycle stages and reported in the inventory. However, it is rare for a life cycle assessment to describe the fate, potential exposure, or dose-response relationships associated with the sources identified in the life cycle inventory. Partly this is due to the enormous information requirements of the LCA, and partly this is due to the historical development of LCA by physical scientists and engineers with greater interest in waste management and resource recovery than in toxicology or risk management. Some of the challenges presently facing risk assessors, such as creating informative comparative risk assessments, communicating the results to managers, stakeholders, and the public, and handling uncertain or missing information, are exactly the same challenges facing life cycle assessment. Strengthening the linkages between RA and LCA could provide a powerfully informative tool for better management of environmental risks. Biography: Dr. Thomas P. Seager is a civil engineer specializing in sustainability assessment. He has written several articles on topics in industrial ecology, environmental decision analysis, and beneficial reuse of waste materials. He presently serves on the editorial boards of Progress in Industrial Ecology, and the International Journal of Exergy. Dr. Seager has recently joined the faculty of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. |
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