RiskPoll is a suite of impact assessment programs designed to estimate health and environmental risks from airborne emissions of "classical" pollutants (e.g., SO2, NOx, CO, particles and their secondary aerosols such as sulfates) and toxic metals (As, Cd, Cr, Hg, Ni and Pb).  The analysis is steady state.  The impacted receptors include: human health, agricultural crops and building materials. Both physical impacts and damage costs can be quantified using a methodology that is transparent, easy to implement and requires few user input data values.

The emphasis in RiskPoll is to obtain a reasonably accurate and relevant approximation of the impacts using a "simplified" approach. RiskPoll requires a minimum or Core input dataset.  For particulate health risks, for example,  the user must provide data for the pollutant emission rate and deposition, the population density for an area centered at the source and typically having a radius in the range of 500 to 1000 km, and the exposure response functions for assessing health impacts.  However, if more input data are known (e.g., meteorological statistics and stack parameters), improved results are calculated.   The program comes preloaded with default pollutant deposition velocities for selected regions around the world and includes lists of exposure response functions.

The monetary process is optional.  The monetization process requires country specific unit cost data for each impact quantified ($ per impact case).  In the absence of such cost values, a procedure is described in the documentation for transferring known costs from one country to another location.
 

Version
The current program version is 1.051 (dated August 2004)
 

System requirements
The RiskPoll software is a 32-bit application written in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 for the Windows operating system.  The program has been tested on Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP and Windows NT4.0.  The software was developed assuming a screen resolution equal to or better than 1024 by 768.  To take full advantage of the program’s functionality, a mouse is highly recommended.
 

Software requirements
In addition to the RiskPoll program and supporting files, the following software should be available on the computer.

Microsoft Excel 7.0 or later
This software is required to run the AGRIMAT Model, which assesses the impacts and damages to crops and materials, and RiskPoll_MultiMedia, which carries out a health risk assessment from exposure to toxic metals emitted to air. RiskPoll results can also be exported to Excel for further analysis and plotting.

Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or later (http://www.adobe.com/)
This software is required to read the help files.