Comparative Risk Analysis for Priority Ranking of Environmental Problems

Abstract

In Korea, no CRA (comparative risk analysis) studies have been undertaken, nor have their methodologies of such studies been established. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to establish the framework of CRA consisting of health risk, economic risk and perceived risk, and to estimate and compare these risks among the three environmental problems of air pollution, indoor air pollution and drinking water contamination, which are themselves subject to the eight sub -problems of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), regulated pollutants (representative as PM 10) and dioxins (PCDDs/PCDFs) in air pollution, indoor air pollutants (IAPs) and radon in indoor air pollution, and drinking water pollutants (DWPs), disinfection by -products (DBPs) and radionuclides in drinking water contamination in Seoul, Korea. After which, the priorities of these problems were set by individual and integrated risk. From the results, the rankings of both health risk and economical risk were in the following order: radon, PM10, IAPs, HAPs, DWPs, dioxins, DBPs, and radionuclides among the eight sub problems. On the contrary, the ranking of perceived risk was in the following order: HAPs, dioxins, radionuclides, PM10, DWPs, IAPs, Radon and then DBPs among the eight sub-problems.