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Vapor Intrusion Investigation and Mitigation
Published in Benjamin Alter, Environmental Consulting Fundamentals, 2019
The previous three chapters, which describe site investigations, remedial investigations, and remediations, cover three media—surface water, soils, and groundwater. The vapor intrusion pathway merits its own chapter because vapors behave differently in the gaseous phase than do contaminants in the solid or liquids phases, the techniques used to investigate vapor intrusion are unique to this pathway, and the techniques used to mitigate a vapor hazard are different than the techniques used to remediate surface water, soil, or groundwater contamination. Vapor intrusion essentially is an indoor air hazard, but because the origins of the vapors are different, the basis of the vapor intrusion investigation and fundamental portions of the mitigation of the vapor intrusion hazard differ from indoor air, which is discussed in Chapter 17 of this book.
Traditional and innovative methods for physical and chemical remediation of soil contaminated with organic contaminants
Published in Katalin Gruiz, Tamás Meggyes, Éva Fenyvesi, Engineering Tools for Environmental Risk Management – 4, 2019
É. Fenyvesi, K. Gruiz, E. Morillo, J. Villaverde
From groundwater to soil air: TCE is volatile and most of TCE is in vapor form in the environment. This tendency results in high TCE concentrations in soil air and transport by diffusion into atmospheric air. The process leads to vapor intrusion into buildings on the top of contaminated soil or above contaminated groundwater.
Human Health Risk Assessment in Site Remediation
Published in Rong Yue, Fundamentals of Environmental Site Assessment and Remediation, 2018
Chawn Y. Jeng, Yue Rong, Ravi Arulanantham
As discussed earlier, a pollutant discharged to the subsurface can impact human health via upward movement to the surface where humans live and work. In the United States, subsurface vapor intrusion into indoor air has received attention lately, as it is a potential concern for any building, existing or planned, located near soil or groundwater contaminated with volatile chemicals. Pathways of volatile contaminants that may lead to indoor air concern via vapor intrusion include (1) volatilization upward from the underlying contaminated soil, (2) migration (diffusion and advection) of contaminants in soil gas, and (3) volatilization upward from the underlying groundwater (see Chapter 6 for additional details).
An alternative generic groundwater-to-indoor air attenuation factor for application in commercial, industrial, and other nonresidential settings
Published in Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 2023
Laurent C. Levy, Keri E. Hallberg, Rodrigo Gonzalez-Abraham, Christopher C. Lutes, Loren G. Lund, Donna Caldwell, Teresie R. Walker
Vapor intrusion (VI) is the process by which vapor-forming chemicals, such as trichloroethene (TCE), tetrachloroethene (PCE), and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs), can migrate from the subsurface into the indoor air of overlying buildings. VOC concentrations decrease during migration as a result of subsurface diffusion processes coupled with the dilution that occurs when VOC vapors enter a building and mix with indoor air (Johnson and Ettinger 1991). The aggregate effect of these physical and chemical attenuation mechanisms can be quantified through the use of a VI attenuation factor (AF), which is defined as the unitless ratio of the indoor air concentration arising from VI to the subsurface vapor concentration at the point or depth of interest in the VI pathway (EPA 2012a). Subsurface vapor concentrations can be measured directly under a building as subslab soil gas (SSSG), measured exterior to the building at varying depths in the unsaturated zone, or derived from groundwater concentrations by converting the dissolved concentration to a vapor concentration using Henry’s law (EPA 2012a). A previous paper focused on the SSSG-to-indoor air AFs (Hallberg et al. 2021). The analyses presented in this paper focus on the groundwater-to-indoor air AFs (also referred to as groundwater AFs). These AFs are frequently used during VI assessments to predict potential VI-related indoor air concentrations in buildings overlying VOC plumes on the basis of existing groundwater quality data.
An alternative generic subslab soil gas-to-indoor air attenuation factor for application in commercial, industrial, and other nonresidential settings
Published in Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 2021
Keri E. Hallberg, Laurent C. Levy, Rodrigo Gonzalez-Abraham, Christopher C. Lutes, Loren G. Lund, Donna Caldwell
Vapor intrusion (VI) is the process by which vapor-forming chemicals, such as trichloroethene (TCE), tetrachloroethene (PCE), and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs), can migrate from the subsurface into the indoor air of overlying buildings. Reduction in VOC concentrations will occur during migration, resulting from subsurface diffusion processes coupled with the dilution that occurs when VOC vapors enter a building and mix with indoor air (Johnson and Ettinger 1991). The aggregate effect of these physical and chemical attenuation mechanisms can be quantified through the use of a VI attenuation factor (AF), which is defined as the unitless ratio of the indoor air concentration arising from VI to the subsurface vapor concentration at the point or depth of interest in the VI pathway (EPA 2012). Subsurface vapor concentrations can be measured directly under a building as subslab soil gas (SSSG), measured exterior to the building at varying depths in the unsaturated zone, or derived from groundwater concentrations by converting the dissolved concentration to a vapor concentration using Henry’s law (EPA 2012). The analyses presented in this paper focus on the SSSG-to-indoor air AF (also referred to as SSSG AF), defined as the unitless ratio of the indoor air concentration to the SSSG concentration. These AFs are frequently used during VI investigations to predict potential indoor air concentrations due to VI based on empirical SSSG data.