In November, U.S. EPA issued a guidance document, "Assessing Protectiveness at Sites for Vapor Intrusion, Supplement to the 'Comprehensive Five-Year Review Guidance'" OSWER Directive 9200.2-84. This is not EPA's long-awaited Final Vapor Intrusion Guidance, which is now expected to be released some time early next year.
"The purpose of this supplemental guidance is to provide recommendations for assessing the protectiveness of a remedy for vapor intrusion at private and federal facility Superfund sites during the five-year review process described in the Comprehensive Five-Year Review Guidance (EPA, 2001). It also provides recommendations for assessing protectiveness at sites where a vapor intrusion remedy has not been implemented and: 1) the vapor intrusion pathway was never adequately characterized; or 2) changes in site conditions since the last five-year review have potentially led to a complete vapor intrusion pathway."
The new (Nov. 2012) guidance fleshes out each of the three major questions in the Comprehensive (2001) guidance, adding sub-questions relevant to vapor intrusion. That is, for each question it lists factors that should be considered.
Those three questions are: Question A: Is the remedy functioning as intended by the decision documents? Question B – Are the exposure assumptions, toxicity data, cleanup levels, and RAOs used at the time of the remedy selection still valid? Question C – Has any other information come to light that could call into question the protectiveness of the remedy?
To download the 12-page, 143 KB PDF document, go to You may need to copy and paste the link.
Lenny
-- Lenny Siegel Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight a project of the Pacific Studies Center 278-A Hope Street Mountain View, CA 94041 Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545 Fax: 650-961-8918 LSiegel@cpeo.orghttp://www.cpeo.org |