Integració de diferents tècniques de monitorització ambiental i anàlisi de resultats per l'optimització de l'avaluació de riscos
- Autores: Montserrat Mari Marcos
- Directores de la Tesis: José Luis Domingo Roig (dir. tes.), Marta Schuhmacher Ansuategui (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Rovira i Virgili ( España ) en 2008
- Idioma: catalán
- ISBN: 9788469188637
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Francesc Castells Piqué (presid.), María Mercedes Gómez Arnaiz (secret.), Carles Ibáñez (voc.), Vicenç Martí (voc.), Martí Nadal Lomas (voc.)
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
Waste management is one of the main troubles of the current society. Incineration has many advantages in front of other disposal options since the volume of the wastes is reduced, pathogens are eliminated and involves energy recovery. On the other hand, the potential emissions of hazardous substances such as dioxins and furans (PCDD/Fs) and other persistent organic pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCNs) as well as of heavy metals, generate concern on the population living around of the incinerators (syndrome NIMBY - "Not In My BackYard"). The objective of the thesis is the application of different monitoring and data analysis tools in other to assess the heath risks generated by incineration. The work has been divided into 6 Chapters including six articles where different methodologies are used to assess the environmental impact and the heath risks of different incinerators.Chapter I includes a brief introduction about waste incineration and the potential risks associated to its emissions. In Chapter II, soils and herbage are used as long and short term pollution monitors. Two articles are included. In the first article, the impact of an industrial waste incinerator is studied , while in the second one a municipal solid waste incinerator was assessed. In both studies, the results indicated that neither was a relevant source of heavy metals and PCDD/Fs.In Chapter III, the levels of PCDD/Fs, PCBs, PCNs and heavy metals were measured around a municipal waste incinerator. Two articles were included in this area. In the first article, the use of passive samplers (polyurethane foam) was investigated. In the second article, the levels of PCDD/Fs and heavy metals in ambient air around a municipal waste incinerator are presented. The Principal Component Analysis was also used in order to get information about the relationship between samples, pollutants and possible sources. The results indicated a remarkable difference between ambient (inmission) and the incinerator (emission) profiles. These results indicated that the current PCDD/Fs levels are more related to other sources (for example to traffic emissions).In Chapter IV, the impact of an incinerator is studied using biological monitoring (for plant workers). The results indicated a diminishment in the levels of the PCDD/Fs while the concentrations of the other organic compounds studied were similar to those found in the previous studies (including the control). No differences were found between the different workers according to their tasks in the incinerator (plant, administration or laboratory).In Chapter V the propagation of uncertainty and variability in the heath risks assessment was evaluated. A new tool, Fuzzy Latin Hypercube Sampling (FLHS), was used. The case study of the evaluation of the risks produces by the emissions of PCDD/Fs by an incinerator was used. This tool showed superiority above other convention methodologies such as the Monte Carlo Simulation.Finally, in Chapter V the general conclusions are presented. The results of the different studies of the different waste incinerators of Spain showed the effectiveness of the current restrictive legislations around the emissions of PCDD/Fs and metals by incinerators. The results indicated that current incinerator emissions do not involve additional risks for the population living around them.
