Risk assessments are completed to evaluate contamination poses unacceptable human health or ecological risks.

Does your contamination pose a risk to people or the environment?  You may need a human health or ecological risk assessment to find out.  Furthermore, a risk assessment and true understanding of needs helps prevent unnecessary and costly remediation.

3.1    Human Health Risk Assessment

A human health risk assessment, beyond that completed during an environmental site assessment, may be required to assess potential adverse effects to people based on actual site conditions.  This is typically called a Tier 2 assessment and comprises identifying issues, assessing hazards, assessing exposure, characterising risk, communicating and managing risk.  A Tier 2 assessment results in the development of site-specific target levels to compare site data against.

3.2    Ecological Risk Assessment

Similar to a human health risk assessment but focused on potential ecological risk and protecting ecological values such as biota supporting ecological processes, including microorganisms and soil invertebrates, native flora and fauna, introduced flora and fauna, and transitory or permanent wildlife.