Project Goals

The project aims to produce risk area maps from the Tampere region, in which the various sources of arsenic contaminations are identified. Further, by integrating the versatile available information and filling some gaps in the knowledge, health and environmental risk assessment will be produced and recommendations for the preventive/remediation and water and soil treatment methods will be presented.

The proposed research area is ideal for this purpose due to the large amount of existing data and the complex origin of the arsenic contamination. New application is that all information will be combined together with modern technologies (agricultural soil, till, bedrock, surface and ground water, lake sediments, stream sediments) with the aim of finding arsenic sources and transportation routes.

The risk assessment will be based on selected test cases which may be households or farms having been exploited arsenic-bearing water and soil for a long time, wood treatment plants or abandoned mine areas. All relevant information will be gathered, and for example, ecotoxicological tests and biomonitoring will be carried out to obtain sufficient understanding of the behavior of arsenic in the system.

Recommendations for preventive/remediation actions will be presented to lower the risk level. The potential methods may include restrictions to the land use practices, remediation of contaminate soil or removal of arsenic from the potable water or mine effluents. Some field experiments will be established to test the treatment of arsenic bearing waters. The applied technique will be based on adsorbent material developed by Kemira.

This project is the first in Finland to create an overall, large-scale risk management strategy for a region that has both natural and anthropogenic contaminant sources. Normally, contamination problems have been managed site-specifically. In site-specific approach especially in case of high background contaminant levels - either natural or anthropogenic - difficulties are encountered e.g. in the definition of boundaries of the contaminated area, definition of actual risks and their acceptability, and planning of risk management actions. In practice the environmental authorities are also still unaware how to take these aspects into account in the granting of environmental permits. Therefore, besides producing data on feasible technologies and risks caused by high environmental arsenic levels, RAMAS will also strive to produce information for practical decision making.

The project work is devided into logically proceeding tasks. The main responsibilities have been devided between the partners and a Task Leader has been appointed for the coordination of the work:

1. Natural arsenic sources (GTK), Birgitta Backman
2. Anthropogenic arsenic sources (PIR), Kati Vaajasaari
3. Risk assessment (SYKE), Eija Schultz
4. Risk Management (SYKE), Jaana Sorvari
5. Dissemination of results (TKK), Kirsti Loukola-Ruskeeniemi
6. Project management (GTK/PC), Timo Ruskeeniemi


For additional information please contact:

Project coordinator Timo Ruskeeniemi, email: first name.last namegtk.fi,
Project manager Birgitta Backman, email: first name.last namegtk.fi