Release notes

Dear S-Risk users,

The VITO and SPAQυE teams are in the final stages of transferring the S-Risk tool from VITO to SPAQUE server.

Please note this transfer won’t affect most of your habits, but it is essential to keep in mind the following points:

• During the transfer period, which takes place between March 29th and April 2nd, you won’t be able to use S-Risk. Please be mindful of your deadlines for your risk assessments;
• Starting from Monday, April 3rd, you can connect to S-Risk tool as usual, on the same website, with your current username and your current password;
• All your simulations done in the past with S-Risk are still available;
• You will connect to S-Risk version 2, with minor appearance differences. The difference between the current S-Risk (called S-Risk version 1) and the new one is IT updating (that the user doesn’t see) and also the re-programming of the interface. The new interface looks like the old one, with the same windows but minor changes are about the method for the selection of the standard scenario or the chemicals, for example. Some videos to help you navigate the new interface are available on the website.

Regarding administrative steps, please keep the following in mind between April and June:

• Send the new user agreement to SPAQUE. You have to sign it and send it back to SPAQUE to the following e-mail address : s-risk@spaque.be. You will find it in attached file (in English and French languages, considering your preference);
• Register on the website. We will provide you the URL at a later time;
• Pay the fees as soon as SPAQUE sends to you the invoice. The cost is 400 € VAT excluded for the yearly fee per individual account. No new fee for the global registration is required;
• The co-owners and SPAQUE have decided to allow users until June 30, 2023 to complete these necessary actions in order to comply. Rest assured that during this period, access will not be cut off.

The S-Risk team, composed of Mélissa d’Accardo, Marc Paillet and Marie Jailler from SPAQuE, is responsible for the following tasks:

• Hosting of S-Risk tool;
• IT maintenance : IT technical watch and IT technical improvement in order to ensure model durability (preventive IT maintenance) and IT technical repairs (curative IT maintenance);
• IT development : the integration of new pollutants in the database, the change of the soil/plant transfer equations or other similar kind of modification, the change of territory-specific elements ;
• Helpdesk: handling tickets by users covering: operational questions on licensing, web application, website or demo accounts, calculation-related problems, simulation approach specific cases.

We hope this transition will proceed smoothly for everyone.

Best regards,

S-Risk team

S-Risk 1.3.2 was planned to be released on February 24, 2022. Due to unforeseen technical issues, the release was retracted on February 25 and rolled back to 1.3.1.

This is a bugfix release with corrections for a few bugs that have recently been uncovered, both in the simulation model as well as the web application.

Model fixes

→ Fix for Kd formule for copper

For a number of inorganic substances, the k_d factor is calculated based on the formula shown in Eq. 1 of the technical guidance. This also happens for copper, but it turns out that the parameter values used in the S-Risk model were incorrect.

We have investigated the impact of this bug by re-calculating all recent (i.e., non-archived) simulations involving copper available in the S-Risk database. 
The differences in resulting RI and CI values turn out to be very small (e.g., < 0.009 for “Overall RI”), and we have not found any simulations in which the overall conclusions have changed (i.e., RI<1 to RI>1 or vice versa).

→ Fix for user-provided egg concentrations

It has turned out that S-Risk does not take into account user-provided egg concentrations (see “Concentrations” tab > Tier 2 > “Animal products” button). In case the user provides an actuall egg concentration value, S-Risk will still rely on the BTF-calculated concentration instead of the provided value.

We have investigated the impact of this issue by looking up all recent (i.e., non-archived) simulations with user-provided egg concentrations in the S-Risk database. We have found no user simulations in our database that provide their own egg concentration measurements.

→ Fix for DF_gw

DF_gw is the dilution factor from pore water to groundwater, and is described in section 4.2 of the S-Risk Technical Guidance Document. In very rare, hypothetical situations, the DF_gw value could drop below 1.0 and result in groundwater concentrations higher than the pore water concentrations via Equation 21. This concerns hypothetical calculations with extreme values of other parameters, which do not reflect realistic situations.

The model has now been adjusted to constrain the value of DF_gw to be bigger than 1.0, so this situation can not occur anymore.

Web application fixes

• made the login page look great again
• the validation of parameter values (when saving or switching tabs) now runs in its own process, to keep the web interface as responsive as possible
• fix to allow user-provided plant concentrations to be removed again in model configuration dialogs
• ... and some minor bug fixes

Contact us via info@s-risk.be if you have further questions!

S-Risk 1.3.1 adds 2 new substances to the list of default chemicals in the Flemish version of S-Risk: 

• perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS)
• perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)

The substance information sheets for these new compounds can be found here (pdf).  A detailed report discussing the derivation of soil remediation values (SRV) can be found here (pdf).

Both of these documents are also available from our Documents page.

Contact us via info@s-risk.be if you have further questions!

S-Risk 1.3 is a release with significant changes in parameters for the S-Risk model, and some platform optimizations.

The changes mainly concern:

• changes to soil ingestion parameters, switching to P60 values instead of P95 
• changes to risk parameters for chlorinated compounds: dichloromethane, tetrachloromethane, trichloroethene, 1,1,1-trichloroethane and tetrachloroethene
• bug fix which causes PDF report generation to fail in some situations

A detailed note describing the parameter changes can be found here.

Full details concerning the review of risk parameters for the chlorinated compounds can be found in this report, also available from our Documents page.

Contact us via info@s-risk.be if you have further questions!

S-Risk 1.2.6 is a minor bugfix release

• Fix for an issue where evaporation to outdoor air was not consistently calculated for elemental mercury and methyl mercury. 

• Fix for an issue where the calculated concentration in eggs was not shown in the "detail results" section of the PDF report.

Contact us via info@s-risk.be if you have further questions!

This release includes a number of fixes and some maintenance and parameter adjustments.

General fixes & changes

• Fix for incorrect water-filled porosity in the capillary zone (θ_wcz):

  By default, θ_wcz amounts to 0.34 (FL/BRX) or 0.391 (WAL) for the "generic" soil layer type. However, for a newly created simulation – which has one “generic” standard soil layer by default – this parameter was systematically set to 0 instead of the correct default value. For all other simulations, i.e., simulations where the default “generic” soil layer has been replaced by (an)other soil layer(s), the correct (default) value for θ_wcz is set. Also, in simulations where a second/third/… generic soil layer has been added, the correct (default) value for θ_wcz will be taken.

  We have discussed this issue with the FL, BRX and WAL government. In case the involved simulation(s) is (are) resulting from a closed file, you don't have to do anything. In other cases, i.e., when you want to make re-use of an involved simulation (created before release 1.2.5), either for creating a new simulation (by using the copy function) or for doing new calculations with the respective simulation, you manually have to adjust this parameter value. How can you do this?

• Switch to Tier 2 mode and go to the “Soil” tab;
• Select the generic soil layer, click on the “Customize” button and modify the soil layer name;

• Behind "θ_wcz (m³/m³)", enter 0.34 (FL/BRX) or 0.391 (WAL) instead of 0.

  Contact us via info@s-risk.be if you have further questions!

• Changed thousands separator for numbers to space, to avoid confusion with decimal numbers. 
• Adjustments to summary report, so it will be saved correctly to PDF in Chrome.

Parameter adjustments

The Walloon government decided to change the toxicological threshold values of some default WAL chlorinated substances:

• for hexachlorobenzene, the values for systemic threshold effects have been changed:
  • oral TDI and dermal TDU: 5.0E-5 mg/kg bw/d;
  • TCA: 2.45E-4 mg/m³;
• for pentachlorobenzene, the TCA value for systemic threshold effects has been changed: 2.8E-3 mg/m³;
• for 2,3,4,6 tetrachlorophenol, the TCA value for systemic threshold effects has been changed: 0.35 mg/m³.

Please, be careful when making re-use of simulations (created before release 1.2.5) containing these substances, either for creating a new simulation (by using the copy function) or for doing new calculations with the respective simulation! In both cases, you manually have to adjust this parameter value. How can you do this?

• Switch to Tier 2 mode and go to the “Chemical” tab;
• Select the appropriate chemical, click on the “Customize” button and modify the chemical name;
• Go to the “Risk” tab and select the respective chemical;
• Within the “Threshold effects – Systemic effects” panel, enter three times the appropriate value for TDI, TDU and/or TCA.

Contact us via info@s-risk.be if you have further questions!

S-Risk 1.2.4 is an interim release containing a minor fix and some improvements to the web application.

• fix for handling of Kd factors in situations with a separate infoor profile, for metals without a Kd formula
  Users with simulations that were possibly affected by this, have been informed by email.
• several fixes to optimize network traffic to the server

This version is a minor update with reporting improvements and fixes for some specific operational issues.

• exposure routes are now more clearly labeled in the summary report
• additional link is available to the summary report, in case it doesn't auto-appear after calculation
• fix for counting the number of simulations being processed
• minor improvements in the summary report
• exposure routes are now shown in the same order everywhere in the reports

This release includes a number of maintenance adjustments and minor fixes, and further paves the way for the introduction of the Walloon edition of S-Risk. 

General fixes & changes

• several improvements in the summary report
• improvements in the archived simulations interface
• improved consistency of toxicological endpoint ordering in Risk tab & detailed reports
• improved error reporting in web interface
• fixed missing translations in Dutch interface
• improved error reporting in case of groundwater table regarding concrete slab depth
• fix for decimal separator in scientific notation
• improved handling of "stuck" simulations that seem to keep running forever
• better transaction handling in the database to optimize performance

Parameter adjustments

These changes can affect the results of some Flemish/Brussels S-Risk simulations. 

All existing simulations in our database have been reviewed, and the S-Risk accounts with simulations possibly affected by these changes will be notified by email. Contact us via info@s-risk.be if you have further questions!

• fixed handling of parameter "Fraction of soil in indoor dust": sometimes, a wrong value was assigned when changing applications for a simulation;
• for 1,2,3-Trimethylbenzene and 1,2,4-Trimethylbenzene, the dermal TDU value for systemic threshold effects has been changed. Old value: 0.15, new value: 0.05.