Dr Atul M. Salhotra recently delivered a short course at the Lodge on the topic of Applications of Health Risk Assessment for Environmental Decision-making.
Dr Salhotra is the Founding Principal and Director of the Risk Assessment & Management Group, Inc. (The RAM Group). Prior to this, he worked with Woodward-Clyde Consultants for about 10 years and he rose to Vice President and Senior Consultant in WCC's Houston Office. He was the lead technical person for many risk assessments and projects across the USA.
Dr Salhotra is involved with contaminant fate and transport modelling, statistical analysis, data interpretation and regulatory interaction and negotiations. He was responsible for the development of several models which are currently used throughout the world.
Dr Salhotra is an ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) certified trainer for the Risk Based Corrective Action Programme (RBCA). He has conducted training programmes for many different State agencies, trade organisations and industries throughout the world.
His Course, which was attended by participants from Greece, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, as well as the UK, was aimed at the calculation of human health risk and risk-based target levels at a variety of contaminated sectors.
The course consisted of an overview of the advantages of risk assessment, risk based decision-making and risk based corrective action process relative to the conventional approach of clearing sites to empirical levels. The Course included a discussion of the key policy choices and all the commonly encountered complete roots of exposure and pathways through air, groundwater, food and surface waters.
The application of fate and transport models for exposure assessment were discussed, together with commonly used saturated zone, unsaturated zone, air emission and dispersion models and their application to risk assessment.
Throughout the Course, several site-specific examples and case studies were presented. The effect of site hydro-geological conditions on the overall risk-based decision was also discussed. The Course also included discussion of the role of natural attenuation in managing contaminated sites. Included in the Course was a demonstration of several commercially available software codes and their application within the RA process.
The Course was very well received by the participants and it is hoped that it will be repeated in the future.
Wessex Institute