통합환경관리를 위한 매체 통합적 위해성 평가의 필요성 및 현황

The environment is comprised of various multi-media including air, water, soil and so on. Numerous kinds of hazardous chemicals are increasingly emitted into the environment from various emission sources, which makes it more complex and difficult to resolve the environmental problems. Since hazardous chemicals behave interactively in the multi-media environment by being transferred and/or partitioned from one medium to another, it requires so-called 'multi-media approach' to assess their fate in the environment and to develop appropriate policy measures. Medium-specific environmental management of hazardous substances may result in the failure of environmental policies. Currently, 'integrated environmental management' has become a new paradigm for the management of hazardous chemicals in many countries. Furthermore, receptor-oriented risk assesment and management is currently pursued as one of tools for the integrated environmental management. In receptor-oriented approaches, decision is made based on the total risk arising from multi-exposure pathways, which may be called 'Integrated Multimedia Risk Assessment' and compared to aggregated and/or cumulative risk assessment as carried out in the united states or EU countries. In this paper, basic concepts and policy needs for integrated multimedia risk assessment are introduced and current status in Korea and other countries including united states and EU is reviewed. Ministry of Environment Korea emphasizes the importance of integrated risk assessment and management of hazardous substances and gives efforts to construct technical and instrumental infra-structures for implementing such policy initiatives. In Korea, it is expected that the integrated environmental management will come true in near future as being supported by integrated multimedia risk assessment.