Environmental Risk Assessment of Emerging Contaminants Using Degradation Data

Lanqing Hong, Zhi-Sheng Ye () and Ran Ling
Additional contact information
Lanqing Hong: National University of Singapore
Zhi-Sheng Ye: National University of Singapore
Ran Ling: National University of Singapore

Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics, 2018, vol. 23, issue 3, No 5, 390-409

Abstract: Abstract The degradation behavior of an emerging contaminant is a key factor in its environmental risk assessment. Existing risk assessment methods based on EC degradation data commonly neglect the time-varying volatility of the degradation, the possible correlations in degradation between different ECs, and the estimation errors. To fill the gaps, this paper proposes an EC risk assessment framework based on the Wiener process. We first focus on degradation data from competitive experiments, which are adopted to evaluate a useful risk indicator, i.e., the bimolecular rate constant of a degradation reaction. A two-dimensional Wiener process model is developed to capture the degradation behaviors of the target EC and a reference contaminant in the experiment. Point and interval estimations of desired quantities, including the rate constant and the degradation half-life, are developed. We further extend the model to the multivariate case, which is applicable to waste water treatment where multiple ECs degrade in a mixed solution. A risk indicator for the mixed solution is proposed, based on which a minimal treatment time can be determined. Both point and interval estimation procedures of the risk indicator and the minimal treatment time are proposed. Two EC degradation datasets are used to demonstrate the proposed methodologies. Supplementary materials accompanying this paper appear on-line.

Keywords: Interval estimation; Multi-dimensional degradation model; Risk indicator; Stochastic process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13253-018-0326-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jagbes:v:23:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s13253-018-0326-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/13253

DOI: 10.1007/s13253-018-0326-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics is currently edited by Stephen Buckland

More articles in Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics from Springer, The International Biometric Society, American Statistical Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().