عنوان مجله
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JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION
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کلیدواژهها
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Geogenic contamination, Mitigation plans, Monte Carlo simulation, Risk percentile, Whisker box
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چکیده
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The topical research on Human Health Risk Assessment (HHRA) is investigated in this paper but in the context of
uncertainty using Monto Carlo Simulation (MCS) tools. This study aims to capture some of the inherent uncertainties
by implementing MCS in two dimensions: Dimension 1 considers the variability within the prescribed
parameters; and Dimension 2 captures the uncertainty due to functional definitions of some of the moments of
the selected distributions and interdependency of correlated parameters at a higher level. The 2D MCS model of
HHRA is applied to risk assessment of a study area contaminated by arsenic, a challenging case in which arsenic
has a geogenic origin but the risk is triggered by human activities. The results indicate that (i) the uncertainty in
the results for the site reflects a probability distribution of risk with a positive skew; and (ii) the uncertainty
increases by increasing arsenic concentration, as indicated by whisker box diagrams. The study sheds light on
identifying remedial strategies since risk corresponding to Reasonable Maximum Exposure (RME Risk) is higher
than the concern level of risk recommended by USEPA. The risk corresponding to the central tendency exposure
is also higher than the concern level of risk in most of the samples. The paper investigates current water supply
sources in the residential areas and their risk values and accordingly identifies a set of possible action plans to
mitigate risk. However, the formulated 2D MCS can be extended by employing local data for deriving probability
distributions and different uncertainty techniques.
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