Risk Assessment for the Benzene Leakage from a Sunken Ship

Benzene is a known toxic substance. Assuming that this material is exposed to the marine ecosystem, the damage would be tremendous. Samho Brother loading 3,100 tons of benzene was sunken in Taiwan Strait. Sooner or later, subsurface benzene spills will take place. A benzene model which solves the dissolution rate, buoyant velocity, and evaporation rate together with the mass transport equation is developed, which is coupled with ocean model, to predict the behaviour of benzene spill in the target site. The results are applied to ecological risk assessment, in which the PEC (predicted exposure concentration)/PNEC (predicted no effective concentration) ratio is used.