Assessment of Contamination of Harbor Dredged Materials for Beneficial Use

Contamination level assessment of harbor dredged materials is carried out for beneficial use, which generated annually due to port construction and maintenance of harbor channel. The basic purpose of environmental risk assessment was a scientific approach to susceptibility of hazard risk to human's health from different dredged materials. And this paper proposes a guideline of safely beneficial use of dredged materials at both industrial area and residental area, generated from major port execution throughout a sound investigation of their contamination levels. Newly proposed guidelines were in general higher levels compared to both current guidelines of treatment and use of dredged materials and soil environment protection levels. Finally, environmental assessment results of dredged material contamination generated in major ports of Korea for beneficial use based on pre-assessment environmental levels show that some port's dredged materials contain heavy metals such as Cd, As, Cr and Zn, more than base levels which requires more precise contamination investigation. Others were found to be very appropriate for beneficial use.