PETRORISK is a modeling framework used to evaluate environmental risk of petroleum substances and human exposure through these routes due to emissions under typical use conditions as required by the European regulation for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH). Petroleum substances are often complex substances comprised of hundreds to thousands of individual hydrocarbons. The physicochemical, fate, and effects properties of the individual constituents within a petroleum substance can vary over several orders of magnitude, complicating risk assessment. PETRORISK combines the risk assessment strategies used on single chemicals with the hydrocarbon block approach to model complex substances. Blocks are usually defined by available analytical characterization data on substances that are expressed in terms of mass fractions for different structural chemical classes that are specified as a function of C number or boiling point range. The physicochemical and degradation properties of the blocks are determined by the properties of representative constituents in that block. Emissions and predicted exposure concentrations (PEC) are then modeled using mass-weighted individual representative constituents. Overall risk for various environmental compartments at the regional and local level is evaluated by comparing the PECs for individual representative constituents to corresponding predicted no-effect concentrations (PNEC) derived using the Target Lipid Model. Risks to human health are evaluated using the overall predicted human dose resulting from multimedia environmental exposure to a substance-specific derived no-effect level (DNEL). A case study is provided to illustrate how this modeling approach has been applied to assess the risks of kerosene manufacture and use as a fuel.

I welcome the opportunity to provide details of our plans for the journal in the light of recent important developments. This will be the last issue of the journal produced under the aegis of the Institute of Wood Science. As members will be aware, during 2009 the Institute became IWSc -The Wood Technology Society, a part of the new Natural Products Association within the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM 3 ). The bringing together of IWSc and IOM 3 creates an organisation with more than 20 000 individual and corporate members and net assets of over £8.9m. This collaboration also provides a new publisher for the journal, enabling us to take a fresh approach to its future development.

No abstract