Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2013C00288:reg:20:p3
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2013C00288
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 20 (pt 3/4)
Character Range: 1594366–1597208

levels of As are not elevated by historic pollution in urban residential/public open space soils, as can be seen by data from Olszowy et al. (1995) (Table 36). Therefore, in the future, if toxicity data can be expressed in terms of added concentrations, it is recommended that the method of Hamon et al. (2004) be used to estimate background values, as they are soil-specific. Examples of the ABC values generated by the Hamon et al. (2004) method are presented in Table 32.

Table 36. Background concentrations of arsenic (As) from Olszowy et al. (1995) in suburbs of different age and with different intensities of traffic in various states of Australia.
Suburb type               25th percentile As (mg/kg)
                          NSW                         QLD  SA  VIC
New suburb, low traffic   5                           3    5   NA
New suburb, high traffic  5                           3    5   NA
Old suburb, low traffic   5                           4    5   5
Old suburb, high traffic  5                           3    5   5

NA = not available

4.8              Reliability of the soil quality guidelines
The As toxicity dataset met the minimum data requirements to use the SSD method but there were no normalisation relationships available to account for soil characteristics. Based on the criteria for assessing the reliability of SQGs (Schedule B5b), this means that the As SQGs were considered to be of moderate reliability.

4.9              Comparison with other guidelines
A compilation of SQGs for As from a number of jurisdictions is presented in Table 37. These guidelines have a variety of purposes and levels of protection and therefore comparison of the values is problematic. The SQGs for As range from 4.5 mg/kg (added As) for the Dutch to 110 mg/kg (total As) for another European country. The superseded interim urban EIL (NEPC 1999) was 20 mg/kg total As and lies in the lower portion of the range of As SQGs. The As SQG(NOEC & EC10) for freshly contaminated urban residential/public open space soils was 20 mg/kg (total As) and thus identical to the superseded interim urban EIL. The SQG(NOEC & EC10) for aged contamination at 40 mg/kg is twice the superseded interim urban EIL for As.

The SQG(LOEC & EC30) and SQG(EC50) values for As in freshly contaminated urban residential/public open space soils are 50 and 80 mg/kg respectively. The SQG(LOEC & EC30) is in the middle of the range of SQGs for other jurisdictions, while the SQG(EC50) is in the upper portion of the range of SQGs. The aged As SQG(LOEC & EC30) for urban residential/public open space soils lies in the upper part of the range of international SQGs while the aged As SQG(EC50) value for urban residential/public open space soils is markedly larger than any other international SQG.

Table 37. Soil quality guidelines for arsenic (As) from