Human health risk associated with emissions of volatile organic compounds due to the ship-loading of hydrocarbons in refineries

A significant contribution to Volatile Organic Compounds emissions in refineries and petrochemical plants is given by the ship-loading of hydrocarbons. Nevertheless, the assessment of the health risk associated with these sources of contamination is not widespread because it is currently not addressed neither by the European Directive on the integrated pollution prevention or other environmental regulations. The modelling of the emission and the contaminant transport is a complex issue, and this work aims integrating some common procedures within the approach for the human health risk assessment by means of a Geographical Information System. Its application to a case-study is given to verify the validity of the integrated approach and identify the contribution of VOC emissions of the ship-loading, to the risk associated with the total VOC emitted in a typical refinery. The iso-risk contours have also been drawn to allow the identification of critical areas for people to protect them by the adoption of abatement solutions.