A hazard ranking of organic contaminants in refinery effluents.
An environmental hazard ranking model (benchmark ranking model) has been developed and used for the ranking of organic compounds likely to be found in petroleum refinery effluents. The hazard function is essentially a multiplication of variables for toxicity (as LC50), octanol-water ratio (Kow), soil adsorption (Koc), solubility (S), and half-life (T1/2). The final score is obtained by taking the logarithm of the hazard and normalizing the values from 1-10. It is a benchmark ranking (BR) approach in the sense that the hazard for chemicals with essentially unknown environmental behaviors may be compared with the hazard for chemicals with well-known behaviors. In general, debates on water pollution have focused on non-polar (hydrophobic) compounds whereas polar (water soluble) compounds have attracted much less attention and regulation. This study focuses on a number of the polar compounds (methyl-tertiary-butyl-ether [MTBE], morpholine, metanolamine and others) since there are indications that some of these may cause environmental damage. While non-polar compounds receive the highest score in the study, the combination of frequently large volumes, low biodegradability, low treatability, and analytical detection problems suggest caution when neglecting polar compounds in waste minimization pursuits and in the assessment of environmental hazard and damage.
Siljeholm
J
J
Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Norway. jornsi@mit.edu
D002625:Chemistry, Organic; D006256:Hazardous Waste; D007220:Industrial Waste; D055601:Organic Chemistry Phenomena; D010578:Petroleum; D018570:Risk Assessment; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000009:adverse effects*
D006256:Hazardous Waste; D007220:Industrial Waste; D010578:Petroleum; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical