RISC is human health risk assessment software tool for performing human health risk assessments for contaminated sites. Fate and transport models are available to estimate receptor point concentrations in indoor and outdoor air and groundwater.

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RISC Background:

In 1993, BP made a business decision in the U.S. to develop a standardized approach for conducting soil and groundwater risk assessments across all ‘downstream’ activities (service stations through refineries). The rationale was that the company needed to ensure that the latest thinking on fate and transport, exposure, statistical analyses and toxicological criteria were adopted and applied uniformly across its businesses. It would also help ensure that BP spoke with a consistent voice when approaching regulators and the community on this vital issue. Eventually it became clear that a software package containing embedded fate and transport models with intuitive user inputs offered the most convenient and flexible means of implementing this objective. This would enable the process to be readily standardized, communicated and transferred, while still allowing a risk application to be individually tailored to the regulatory regime of the particular business or country. By developing the code in-house, BP would also be able to rapidly adopt new algorithms or approaches (e.g. indoor air models), thus keeping the process evergreen. RISC (previously referred to as BP RISC) Versions 1.0 and 2.0 of the code were released in January, 1994 and August, 1995, respectively, with the former pre-dating the publication of the ASTM standard Risk-Based Corrective Action Applied at Petroleum Release Sites, commonly known as RBCA . Version 3.0, released in September, 1997, was a major upgrade that allowed back-calculations to be performed, i.e. soil and groundwater clean-up targets to be calculated for an input value of acceptable risk.

New Features in RISC Include:

	Irrigation pathways, i.e. water used for gardening but not for indoor usage
	Vegetables grown in contaminated soil
	Two new vapor models , where the vapors are allowed to biodegrade during transport through the unsaturated zone
	Models for surface water and sediment contamination from impacted groundwater and direct comparison with relevant national standards for these media
	The use of groundwater MCLs (maximum concentration levels) and surface water concentrations in addition to acceptable risk levels as the criteria for back-calculating clean-up targets
	The ability to calculate a site-specific target level (SSTL) for a TPH mixture using the site-specific measured concentrations of the TPH fractions detected in the soil

It is felt that Version 4.0 provides the latest and most complete software package for calculating risk to human health and surface water. This version has been peer-reviewed by Arcadis, Geraghty and Miller in Cambridge, UK.

Main Features in RISC Include:

	Customizable chemical database with 82 chemicals.
	An excel spreadsheet based on the RBCA algorithms that can be used to replicate the tiered RBCA process.
	Detailed user's manual with three in-depth example problems.
	Ability to determine risk-based TPH (total petroleum hydrocarbon) targets using the TPH fractions proposed by the U.S. Air Force led TPH Working Group.
	Ability to calculate additive risk due to multiple pathways, compound and receptors (such as a resident exposed as both a child and an adult). Monte Carlo capabilities for probabilistic risk evaluation.
	Fate and transport models that distinguish between presence or absence of phase-separated product (NAPL) in the source zone.

Exposure Pathways in RISC Include:

Ingestion of soil
Dermal contact with soil
Ingestion of groundwater
Dermal contact with groundwater
Inhalation in the shower
Inhalation of outdoor air
Inhalation of indoor air
Ingestion of surface water
Dermal contact with surface water

Fate and Transport Models in RISC Include:

Johnson and Ettinger indoor air model
Volatilisation from groundwater to indoor and outdoor air
Outdoor box model
Unsaturated zone model
Saturated zone model

RISC Applications:

Estimate human health risk from exposure to contaminated media,
Estimate risk-based clean-up levels in various media,
Perform simple fate and transport modeling, and
Evaluate potential ecological impacts to surface water and sediment.

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