Statistical Inference of Environmental Risks under Industrial Water Use

Abstract

The establishment of standards of water disposal on the base of approach of threshold limit values (TLVs) for pollutants, without considering individual characteristics of enterprises, leads, on the one hand, to deterioration of environmental state of water bodies, and, on the other hand, to unsubstantiated increasing of costs for sewage treatment. Besides, as a rule, there are take into account only point estimation of TLV in line with laboratory sample without regard to method error of its calculation. In the work was demonstrated procedure of statistical inference of mistaken establishment of water disposal's standards while using TLV through of example of water disposal in metallurgical production. There was demonstrated that accounting of individual characteristics of enterprise's wastewater and statistical errors of TLV determination enables correct level of tolerable risk of causing of harm to aquatic ecosystems.