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.
![page1image2272](pnglPHdHpPHGz.png) "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 |