Vapor Intrusion and Indoor Air Sampling Issues

Speaker:Mr. Rafat Abbasi, P.E.
Senior Project Manager
School Unit-Cypress Office
School Property Evaluation and Cleanup Division
Cypress, CAAbstract:
The vapor intrusion (VI) into the buildings is one of the most potent pathways for assessing risks associated with releases of chemicals into the environment. In cases where groundwater is shallow, VI becomes an issue of immediate concern to the occupants of the building and poses challenges with respect to acquisition of quality data, associated evaluation, and subsequent need for mitigation. There are approximately 375,000-500,000 contaminated sites in the United States. Half of the high priority sites are contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) and approximately half of those have possible VI of TCE. Almost a quarter of high priority sites have VI issues associated with TCE. As the field of VI evolves and environmental community gains experience in this field, it also realizes the need for higher quality data for risk-management decision-making. In this presentation, we will attempt to address approaches for screening sites for VI and indoor air sampling and highlight issues associated with acquisition of indoor air data. Based on our agency experience, we will also try to provide some recommendations to address data quality issues.

Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 156

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes