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MARINE RISK ASSESSMENT<br />

evaluate the impact of substances that are released from point <strong>and</strong> diffuse sources over a wider<br />

area. The PECregional is supposed to take into account the further distribution <strong>and</strong> fate of a<br />

chemical upon release. The resulting PECregional is assumed to be a steady-state concentration<br />

of the substance.<br />

The regional system <strong>for</strong> the freshwater environment is a relatively large area of 200 by 200 km<br />

which consists of 97% of soil <strong>and</strong> 3% of water. This system is surrounded by a larger area of the<br />

size of Europe, called the continent (see Sections 2.1.2 <strong>and</strong> 2.3.8.7). If <strong>for</strong> the marine region an<br />

area of similar size would be chosen where the water of the freshwater region would enter into,<br />

the resulting concentrations would be around 0.1% of the freshwater concentrations, mainly due<br />

to the dilution of the freshwater in the much larger seawater region.<br />

To assess the potential impacts of multiple point <strong>and</strong> diffuse sources of substances on the marine<br />

environment a river plume in coastal sea water is considered as a marine regional generic<br />

environment as follows:<br />

An area of coastal sea that receives all<br />

the water from the rivers from the<br />

regional system. This seawater<br />

exchange with global scales<br />

compartment is exchanging chemical<br />

with the continental seawater continent<br />

compartment by dispersion <strong>and</strong><br />

advection (a current of seawater<br />

flowing in a certain direction). The<br />

size of the coastal compartment is<br />

region<br />

40 km long, 10 km wide <strong>and</strong> 10 m<br />

deep. In addition to the input from the<br />

regional river water it receives 1% of<br />

the direct emissions from the inl<strong>and</strong><br />

dispersion reg . rivers<br />

sources which is supposed to<br />

represent a relevant fraction of the advection<br />

sources that are located near the sea<br />

<strong>and</strong> also have direct emissions into<br />

the sea compartment. Most of the<br />

relevant characteristics of the coastal<br />

cont . rivers<br />

compartment are similar to the Figure 15 Coastal sea scenario.<br />

freshwater compartment apart from<br />

the suspended matter concentration that is set to 5 mg/l. In the absence of specific in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />

(e.g. from marine simulation tests) it is assumed that the biodegradation rate in the water column<br />

is approximately three times lower than in freshwater as described in Section 7.3. This scenario<br />

is shown in Figure 15.<br />

This scenario can be modelled with the multi-media fate model that is used <strong>for</strong> the freshwater<br />

PEC calculations, modified to allow dispersive exchange between the coastal zone to the<br />

continental sea water. By default, mixing of river water into the coastal sea gives a dilution<br />

factor of approximately 10. As a result concentrations in coastal seawater are expected to be a<br />

factor of 10 (<strong>for</strong> conservative chemicals) or more (<strong>for</strong> chemicals that react, volatilize or<br />

sediment) lower than in river water. The extent of degradation, volatilization, etc. in this coastal<br />

sea scenario is adequately modeled using the multi-media model.<br />

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