Interpretation of environmental media (IEM)

Interpretation of the state of the environment (IEM) is an approach that has already been presented in several documents:

• in the ministerial note of February 8, 2007 "Polluted sites and soils – Management and redevelopment of polluted sites", pages 22 to 34 of appendix 2;

• in the "methodological tool" entitled "La démarche d'interprétation de l'état des milieux" published by the Ministry of the Environment and available on its website dedicated to polluted sites (see Pour en savoir plus).

The aim of this article is not to produce an additional version of these two documents, but to shed some light on this approach, the practical implementation of which still raises a number of questions. Indeed, having played a fairly active part in the drafting of the documents in question, it's not certain that yet another reformulation is likely to bring about any significant change in the debate.

However, as with any document aimed at as wide and diverse an audience as possible, and designed to cover every possible scenario, a linear reading of its content can legitimately leave the reader somewhat disappointed if he or she does not have certain essential reading keys.

Without pretending to provide the whole kit in a few pages, the aim of this article is to give some of these keys, which will perhaps help put the environmental interpretation approach back into the application context for which it was designed.

To do this, we first need to provide some background information, which will help the reader to understand what the "IEM methodological guide" is, and shouldn't be, in the minds of its designers. The practical implementation of this approach – innovative for some, a simple update of the former ESR (simplified risk assessment) for others; in fact, neither really one nor the other – will be illustrated through a few examples.