A health risk assessment was carried out for the residents of Łęgnowo-Wieś settlement adjacent to a former Zachem Chemical Plant, Bydgoszcz, Poland. Due to the unique Zachem site history and contamination profile, an innovative strategy for soil sampling and contaminant selection was applied. The novelty in the developed strategy consisted of selecting substances for the health risk assessment, taking into consideration the location and boundaries of the groundwater contamination plumes in relation to contamination sources. This allowed limiting the number of the analysed contaminants. The risk assessment focused on the surface soil of a residential area, which was divided into 20 sampling sectors and 6 backyards with wells from which water was used for watering edible plants. A total of 80 inorganic and organic substances were determined, including metals, phenol, aniline, BTEX, diphenyl sulphone, chloroaniline, epichlorohydrin, hydroxybiphenyl, nitrobenzene, octylphenols, toluenediamine, toluidine, 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene. For the health risk assessment, the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s deterministic method was applied. This applies conservative assumptions to obtain risk estimates protective for most of the potential receptors. Three exposure pathways were analysed: (1) incidental soil ingestion, (2) dermal contact with soil and (3) inhalation of fugitive soil particles and volatiles. In all sampling sectors and backyards, the total non-cancer risks (hazard index) were significantly lower than the acceptable level of 1. The acceptable cancer risk level for the single carcinogen of 1 × 10−5 was only insignificantly exceeded in the case of benzo(a)pyrene in three sectors and one backyard. The total cancer risks were lower than the acceptable level of 1 × 10−4 in all sampling sectors and all backyards. The findings show that the soil in the entire residential area is safe for the residents’ health and no remedial actions are required. However, since not all possible exposure pathways were analysed in this study, further research focused on assessing the health risk resulting from the consumption of locally grown food is strongly recommended.
Abstract.One of the elements of the urban plans for adapting to climate change is to identify the range the urban heat island (UHI). To a relatively rare ground station network air temperature, one of the possible methods to identify this phenomenon in cities is the analysis of satellite images, and in particular the thermal images surface cities in conjunction with the landuse structure. In the publication is presented the application of indirect methods of determining surface characteristics of heat island in the cities of Upper Silesia Agglomeration on the basis of the analysis of the thermal images from the satellite Landsat for the period 1986-2016. It presents ways to interpret these images depending on the needs of determination the areas sensitive to the impact of the (UHI) and define the areas where adaptation actions to the climate change should be undertaken.
The paper presents the analysis of the statistical errors of the meteorological parameters predicted by the WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model. The model is used for forecasting air pollution in the Silesian Voivodeship with an accuracy of about 70-80%. Thus, the main idea of the research was assessing to what extent the error in the forecast of meteorological parameters affects the error of the air quality forecast, which can be evaluated using the system InfoSMOG – MED for the inhabitants of the Silesian Voivodeship at www.slaskiesmogstop. It was also investigated how the reduction of the mesh size of the forecast of meteorological parameters affects the error of the forecast of these parameters, which was necessary for the next project SMART. The research was carried out for 3 computational domains: Poland, Silesian Voivodeship and Upper Silesia Metropolitan Region, each with a different grid resolution. The predicted temperature and wind speed data were compared with the measured data from the Polish synoptic stations and the stations of the METAR airports meteorological shield located in the respective domains. In addition, the error of the predicted parameters was investigated in the grid where the climatological station is located in the Śląskie Planetarium in Chorzów.
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