On assessing impacts exerted by objects of accumulated environmental damage on human health and life expectancy

This research work is topical since there are a lot of objects of accumulated environmental damage (AED) in the Russian Federation and the task to eliminate them is fixed in the country legislation. These objects are typically brownfields, abandoned industrial building or constructions, abandoned waste disposal landfills etc. In accordance with the “General cleaning” Federal project we have developed methodical approaches to assessing impacts exerted by AED objects on human health and life expectancy. The aim of the methodology is to spot out priority objects which are to be eliminated as soon as possible. Fuzzy set theory is chosen as a basic method. A unified set of indicators (40 and more) has been developed for each type of AED objects; this set allows assessing how hazardous an object is for population health. The indicators are combined into several conditional groups: overall profile; climatic and spatial characteristics; geological and hydrological properties of a territory; indicators related to quality of the environment in a zone influenced by a specific object. We have used scales to grade a health hazard taking into account weight contributions made by specific indicators and a group of them to the total risk of health disorders. Impacts are assessed allowing for types and severity of potential functional disorders of critical organs and systems in the human body under exposure to contamination. We suggest an algorithm and techniques for calculating risks of negative impacts. A scale with risk ranges (from 0 to 1) allows determining several risk rates including “low”, “moderate”, “average”, “high” and “extremely high” risk. An AED object is assigned into a risk category which corresponds to the maximum value of the membership function. Impacts exerted by objects assigned into “high” and “extremely high” risk categories are to be assessed more profoundly and assessment should involve specific medical and biological examinations. The methodology was tested successfully. The results proved that the selected approaches were relevant and that it was extremely important to collect complete and actual initial data of environment quality in zones influenced by AED objects. In 2022 approximately 192 objects are to be assessed; the express-evaluation is to be accomplished by experts of the Federal Service for Surveillance over Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing. As per the evaluation results, all AED objects are to be ranked and those creating the highest health risks are to be detected. The latter are to be eliminated immediately and complete profound assessment is to be performed at them.