Groundwater risk assessment of leached inorganic substances from façades coated with plasters and mortars

Abstract

A requirement of the Construction Products Regulation (CPR) in the European Union states that construction materials and works must be designed in a way that throughout their entire life cycle, they have no exceedingly high impact on the environment. The objective of the current work was to evaluate the environmental risk of stormwater runoff from plasters and mortars using the Groundwater Risk Assessment (GRA). The source term eluates are based on the results obtained by a model for leaching prediction of inorganic substances for vertical test panels (VTPs) coated with plasters and mortars. During the evaluation, it was determined that vanadium, chromium, lead and zinc are relevant substances leached by plasters and mortars during rain events due to the high magnitude of concentrations, which can lead to a significant alteration in the chemical status of groundwater. The evaluation showed that chromium is the only leached substance that invalidates the applicability of one of the materials for a particular scenario of a selected technical construction application.

Keywords: Façade material; Groundwater risk assessment; Metal leaching; Soil contamination; Stormwater runoff.