QUANTIFICATION OF HUMAN HEALTH RISK TO MSW LANDFILL LEACHATE CONTAMINATION UNDER UNCERTAINTY: AN APPLICATION TO THE TURBHE LANDFILL, NAVI MUMBAI, INDIA

摘要

Landfilling is a cost effective method, which renders it to be a widely used practice across the world, especially in developing countries. However, due to improper management of landfills, the possibility of leachate leakage will be high, which may cause potential impacts on soils, plants, ground water, aquatic organisms and subsequently to human health. In last two decades, various studies have been conducted to quantify the human health risk associated with the landfill sites. However, uncertainty in risk has been rarely reported in the literature. Health risk analysis involves various uncertainty and highly variable parameters that results risk as uncertain quantity. In the present study, uncertainty in human health risk to MSW landfill leachate contamination has been quantified to investigate the long term risk of ground water contamination due to leachate leakage for selected heavy metals during consumption of ground water for children and adults. For this purpose, a landfill simulator LandSim 2.5 (landfill performance simulation) has been used to simulate the landfill activities in a recently developed sanitary Turbhe landfill site, Navi Mumbai, India, for various time slices. Leachate and ground water samples were collected for two years and heavy metal concentrations were analysed through Inductive Coupled Plasma (ICP). Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis were conducted considering contaminant concentration in leachate, body weight of the population and water intake as random parameters and further uncertainty in non-carcinogenic human health risk due to possible consumption of ground water have been quantified for selected heavy metals for children and adults population.