Environmental Surveillance Information

Environmental monitoring of the Hanford Site consists of effluent monitoring and environmental surveillance. Effluent monitoring is conducted at or near facilities on the Site and is discussed in this report in Section 3.0, "Effluent Monitoring Information." Environmental surveillance activities are conducted routinely both on and off the Site with the intent of detecting and quantifying radiological and nonradiological contaminants and assessing their environmental and human health significance. Sections 5.2 through 5.8 describe the results of the Hanford Site environmental and ground-water surveillance programs for 1994 and include, where applicable, information on both radiological and nonradiological monitoring. Radiological doses associated with the surveillance results are discussed in Section 6.0, "Potential Radiation Doses from 1994 Hanford Operations," and the quality assurance and quality control programs developed for ensuring the value of surveillance data are described in Section 7.0, "Quality Assurance."

Many samples are collected and analyzed for the Hanford Site environmental surveillance program, and data obtained from the analytical laboratory are compiled in large computer databases. As it is not practical or desirable to include a listing of individual results in this report, the following sections include summary information emphasizing those radionuclides or chemicals of Hanford origin that are important to environmental or human health concerns. Supplemental data for some sections can be found in Appendix A of this report. More detailed results for specific surface environmental surveillance sampling locations are contained in the volume, Hanford Site Environmental Data 1994Surface and Columbia River (Bisping 1995). Additional information on Hanford Site ground-water monitoring can be found in the annual Hanford Site ground-water monitoring report (e.g., Dresel et al. 1994). The intent of the following summaries is to provide the reader with the most current surveillance data, compare the 1994 data to past data and to existing and accepted standards so that concentrations can be viewed in perspective, and present a general overview of Hanford Site surveillance activities.

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