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Environmental impacts on soil and groundwater at airports: origin, contaminants of concern and environmental risks
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Abstract(s)
Environmental impacts of airports are similar to those of many industries, though their operations
expand over a very large area. Most international impact assessment studies and environmental
management programmes have been giving less focus on the impacts to soil and groundwater than
desirable. This may be the result of the large attention given to air and noise pollution, relegating other
environmental descriptors to a second role, even when the first are comparatively less relevant. One
reason that contributes to such ‘‘biased’’ evaluation is the lack of systematic information about impacts
to soil and groundwater from airport activities, something the present study intends to help correct.
Results presented here include the review of over seven hundred documents and online databases, with
the objective of obtaining the following information to support environmental studies: (i) which
operations are responsible for chemical releases?; (ii) where are these releases located?; (iii) which
contaminants of concern are released?; (iv) what are the associated environmental risks? Results
showed that the main impacts occur as a result of fuel storage, stormwater runoff and drainage systems,
fuel hydrant systems, fuel transport and refuelling, atmospheric deposition, rescue and fire fighting
training areas, winter operations, electrical substations, storage of chemical products by airport owners
or tenants, and maintenance of green areas. A new method for ranking environmental risks of organic
substances, based on chemical properties, is proposed and applied. Results show that the contaminants
with the highest risks are the perfluorochemicals, benzene, trichloroethylene and CCl4.
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Citation
Nunes, L. M.; Zhu, Y.-G.; Stigter, T. Y.; Monteiro, J. P.; Teixeira, M. R. Environmental impacts on soil and groundwater at airports: origin, contaminants of concern and environmental risks. Journal of Environmental Monitoring, 13, 11, 3026-3026, 2011.