Incorporating worker risk information into cleanup decisions for contaminated sites

Thousands of individual sites across the United States were chemically and radioactively contaminated as a result of processing and disposal activities that began more than 50 years ago, before we understood the potential for environmental damage and human health risk from extant waste management practices. Hundreds of these sites were used for research and production in support of the national defense mission, including facilities managed by and for the U.S. Department of Energy. An extensive federal cleanup program is underway to develop appropriate environmental management responses for these facilities, following the general framework developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for Superfund sites. Risks estimated for the public, workers, and ecological resources as part of this EPA framework are intended to serve as input to the overall cleanup plans. Methods and data exist to predict risks for workers involved in common cleanup activities, such as excavation and transportation of wastes for disposal. While worker risks have not often been the driving factor in determining whether active cleanup measures are taken, in certain cases, results of the worker risk analyses have been used to guide the response actions and develop activity-specific protection plans. This paper identifies approaches used to estimate worker risks and illustrates ways to present the results in a manner that can effective]), inform cleanup decisions.