Environmental remediation

Environmental remediation deals with the removal of pollution or contaminants from environmental media such as soil, groundwater, sediment, or surface water. This would mean that once requested by the government or a land remediation authority, immediate action should be taken as this can impact negatively on human health and the environment. Environmental remediation deals with the removal of pollution or contaminants from environmental media such as soil, groundwater, sediment, or surface water. This would mean that once requested by the government or a land remediation authority, immediate action should be taken as this can impact negatively on human health and the environment. Remedial action is generally subject to an array of regulatory requirements, and also can be based on assessments of human health and ecological risks where no legislated standards exist or where standards are advisory. To help with environmental remediation, one can get environmental remediation services. These services help eliminate radiation sources in order to help protect the environment. In the United States, the most comprehensive set of Preliminary Remediation Goals (PRGs) is from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 9. A set of standards used in Europe exists and is often called the Dutch standards. The European Union (EU) is rapidly moving towards Europe-wide standards, although most of the industrialised nations in Europe have their own standards at present. In Canada, most standards for remediation are set by the provinces individually, but the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment provides guidance at a federal level in the form of the Canadian Environmental Quality Guidelines and the Canada-Wide Standards|Canada-Wide Standard for Petroleum Hydrocarbons in Soil. Once a site is suspected of being contaminated there is a need to assess the contamination. Often the assessment begins with preparation of a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment. The historical use of the site and the materials used and produced on site will guide the assessment strategy and type of sampling and chemical analysis to be done. Often nearby sites owned by the same company or which are nearby and have been reclaimed, levelled or filled are also contaminated even where the current land use seems innocuous. For example, a car park may have been levelled by using contaminated waste in the fill. Also important is to consider off site contamination of nearby sites often through decades of emissions to soil, groundwater, and air. Ceiling dust, topsoil, surface and groundwater of nearby properties should also be tested, both before and after any remediation. This is a controversial step as: Often corporations which do voluntary testing of their sites are protected from the reports to environmental agencies becoming public under Freedom of Information Acts, however a 'Freedom of Information' inquiry will often produce other documents that are not protected or will produce references to the reports. In the US there has been a mechanism for taxing polluting industries to form a Superfund to remediate abandoned sites, or to litigate to force corporations to remediate their contaminated sites. Other countries have other mechanisms and commonly sites are rezoned to 'higher' uses such as high density housing, to give the land a higher value so that after deducting cleanup costs there is still an incentive for a developer to purchase the land, clean it up, redevelop it and sell it on, often as apartments (home units). There are several tools for mapping these sites and which allow the user to view additional information. One such tool is TOXMAP, a Geographic Information System (GIS) from the Division of Specialized Information Services of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) that uses maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Superfund and Toxics Release Inventory programs. Remediation technologies are many and varied but can generally be categorized into ex-situ and in-situ methods. Ex-situ methods involve excavation of affected soils and subsequent treatment at the surface as well as extraction of contaminated groundwater and treatment at the surface. In-situ methods seek to treat the contamination without removing the soils or groundwater. Various technologies have been developed for remediation of oil-contaminated soil/sediments.