An Analytic Method for Exposure Reconstruction

A health risk assessment of exposure to contaminants in drinking water frequently requires reconstruction of the groundwater contamination history in aquifers and the water supply wells in the aquifer that are contributing water to the water distribution system used in the community. The development of groundwater flow and fate and transport models that are used in exposure reconstruction analysis may tend to be time-consuming and expensive although this approach is the accepted norm in exposure reconstruction studies. To overcome this burden, new approaches need to be explored to reconstruct groundwater contamination history at a site that would reduce the time and the computational expense of the traditional numerical modeling techniques. The purpose of this study is to investigate the feasibility of the use of a new computational procedure to estimate the historical contamination events and migration of contaminants at a site when there is limited historical data to perform the health risk assessment study.