[CPEO-BIF] "It Came From Beneath: Detecting and Mitigating Vapor Intrusion"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

It Came From Beneath: Detecting and Mitigating Vapor Intrusion

by Rachel Cernansky 
Environmental Health Perspectives
August 2016

Indoor exposure to naturally occurring radon gas has rocketed into public awareness since the 1980s, but now a similar, albeit lesser-known form of indoor pollution is gaining attention of its own. That form is vapor intrusion, the migration of volatile chemicals from groundwater and soil into buildings above them.

There are four main sources of vapor intrusion: industrial sites, military sites, dry cleaners, and gas stations—all locations that produced or heavily used solvents, degreasers, and other volatile chemicals, or that still do. Few experts feel comfortable estimating the scale of vapor intrusion in the United States. But Kelly Pennell, an engineering associate professor at the University of Kentucky Superfund Research Center, says, “Almost every urban environment we have has some kind of historical contamination associated with it.” If volatile chemicals are present as contaminants, then vapor intrusion may be a concern.

“No one really knew [vapor intrusion] had the potential to have as many impacts as it does until the late 1990s and even into the 2000s,” says Dave Folkes, a Colorado-based engineer and senior principal at Geosyntec Consultants. “There was a lot of fear, unknowns, uncertainty because it was very new science, and we really didn’t know much about it. We were all running around trying to learn how to do things quickly.”

…

For the entire article, see
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/124-a141/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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