Introduction and Project Overview
The Great Lakes comprise the largest freshwater system in the world. The large surface areas, temperate climate and long residence times of the lakes makes them particularly susceptible to accumulation of toxic chemicals. A major source of these chemicals is air emissions from the surrounding region which can be deposited to the lakes. To address regional atmospheric deposition and emission reduction strategies, a complete, high-quality regional emissions inventory is required for modeling efforts, multi-media risk assessment and the design of monitoring programs. This project centers upon quantifying these emissions and presenting the results in a format that facilitates the use of the data to form local, regional and binational strategies and policies for reducing the multi-media exposures and resulting impacts these toxic pollutants have on the region's lakes, wildlife and human health. Improved data quality, accuracy and consistency is an ongoing goal.
The Great Lakes Regional Toxic Air Emissions Inventory is a unique program, developed from the ground up by the eight Great Lakes states and the Province of Ontario over the two decades since the signing if the Great Lakes Toxic Substance Control Agreement of 1986. Development has included the development and refinement of an agreed-up regional Protocol, design and implementation of project software, creation of an internet data access tool, and production of triennial regional inventories inventories for 1993, 1996, 1999 and 2002, with intervening updates for 1997, 1998 and 2001 data years. The Steering Committee has also taken on special projects, such as a regional assessment of benzo(a)pyrene emissions In addition of the immediate goals of the project, the Great Lakes Regional Toxic Air Emissions Inventory is compiled to achieve numerous state and regional goals, such as data exchange with the U.S. EPA's National Emissions Inventory (NEI).
A Steering Committee, comprised of one or several members from each of the participating state or provincial air quality control agencies, lead development of inventories and serve as experts for quality assurance of state, provincial and national data. Each participating jurisdiction benefits through the Committee's shared expertise, the provision of tools for state and provincial inventory development, capacity building and shared data dissemination tools. The project has created a software, RAPIDS, for emission calculations and/or data management.
The air quality control agencies of the state and provincial governments in the region work cooperatively through the Great Lakes Commission to create and manage the regional inventory. If not for this project, the state and provincial inventories across the Great Lakes basin would be largely incompatible. The project locates and estimates emissions from significant sources of 211 toxic air pollutants (all 188 Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) and several additional air toxics of particular concern to the Great Lakes region).
The project's Centralized Air emissions Repository On-Line (CAROL, http://mds.glc.org/carol), represents a major advance in complete, user-friendly access to toxic air emissions data. There remain numerous challenges that must be addressed to achieve the goals of the project. These include the continued improvement of emission estimation techniques and consistency among state as well as outreach to user groups to facilitate incorporation of inventory data into regional scientific and policy efforts. The proposed current phase of this project includes efforts to robustly address these remaining needs.
The main project objective is to present researchers, policymakers and other interested stakeholders with detailed, accurate, consistent and up-to-date regional data on the sources and emission levels of toxic air pollutants for the Great Lakes region. These data provide the foundation for a better understanding of the patterns and impacts of multi-media human and wildlife exposures and provide information supporting the reduction of adverse affects to the environment and human health. The project aims to provide decisionmakers with easy access to inventory information through dissemination on the Internet and through printed materials.
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Project Resources
Regional Air Pollutant Inventory Development System (RAPIDS):
Overview of RAPIDS System
RAPIDS 2.4
RAPIDS 3.0 Design
Project Protocol for compiling the regional inventory
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