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Proceedings of the 5th Global Workshop on Digital Soil Mapping 2012, Sydney, Australia, p. 19-24

DOI: 10.1201/b12728-6

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Spatial modeling of human exposure to soil contamination- an example of Digital Soil Assessment

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Preprint: policy unknown
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Postprint: policy unknown
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Abstract

Contamination of soil can have strong impacts on population health. Modeling these potential impacts is then an important issue of Digital Soil Assessment. Indeed, the quality of the health risk assessment strongly depends on the quality of digital soil contamination mapping. Thus, communicating about the risks should not be done independently of the overall uncertainties. The purpose of this study is to spatially assess human exposure to soil contaminants (Cadmium presented here) as a second step of digital soil contamination mapping. To this aim, a GIS-based raster platform is developed at 1 km2 resolution in order to incorporate soil contaminants and environmental pathways of these contaminants into human exposure. Contaminant soil concentrations are used to estimate soil ingestion pathway and transfer to vegetation and animal product. Soil concentrations are estimated using a kriging method that integrates data from surface and point spatial supports. Losses and inputs of chemical substances by several mechanisms, including leaching, runoff and deposition are also taken into account. After modeling the soil contaminant concentrations, the multimedia exposure model is applied for getting population exposure risk assessment. Results show two highly exposed areas, associated with ingestion of locally grown food. These areas with intermediate DSM uncertainty, correspond to a former industrial site and the suburb of the Lille city agglomeration. The platform, called PLAINE, allows the detection of hot-spot areas with significantly elevated exposure indicator values and for the design of further environmental sampling campaigns.