Protocol for the Derivation of Environmental and Human ... - CCME

Overview
In response to growing public concern over the potential ecological
and human-health effects associated with exposure to
contaminated sites, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the
Environment (CCME) initiated in 1989 a five-year program
entitled the National Contaminated Sites Remediation Program
(NCSRP).
To promote consistency and provide guidance in assessing and
remediating contaminated sites under this program, the CCME
released an interim set of numerical environmental quality
guidelines in September 1991. The Interim Canadian
Environmental Quality Criteria for Contaminated Sites (CCME,
1991a) were established for defined land uses by adopting existing
criteria for soil and water used by various jurisdictions in Canada.
However, many of the interim criteria for soil are not scientifically
defensible. This protocol for guidelines derivation was developed
to ensure that revised guidelines are scientifically defensible.
The protocol considers the effects of contaminated soil exposure
on human and ecological receptors for given land uses. The
pathways and receptors of contaminated soil considered in the
derivation of soil quality guidelines were selected based on
exposure scenarios for agricultural, residential/parkland,
commercial, and industrial land uses.
Procedures for deriving environmental soil quality guidelines were
developed to maintain important ecological functions that support
activities associated with the identified land uses. Guidelines are
derived using toxicological data to determine the threshold level
on key receptors. Exposure from direct soil contact is the primary
derivation procedure for environmental guidelines for
residential/parkland and commercial/industrial land uses. Another
procedure, exposure from contaminated soil and food ingestion,
may be considered for certain land uses if there is adequate data.
For agricultural land use, if both derivation procedures are used,
the lowest-value result is considered the environmental soil quality
guideline.
Deriving human health based soil quality guidelines includes:
• assessing the hazard posed by a chemical;
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