http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/oil-sands-found-to-be-a-leading-source-of-air-pollution-in-north-america/article30151841/
[Oh-oh! Science. This story does not take into account burning off
over 500,000 hectares - or 1,250,000 acres - about the area of Prince
Edward Island - of surrounding boreal forest starting a few weeks ago.
The burn area is still growing.]
Oil sands found to be a leading source of air pollution in North America
IVAN SEMENIUK - SCIENCE REPORTER
The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, May 25, 2016 1:39PM EDT
Last updated Thursday, May 26, 2016 4:53AM EDT
A cloud of noxious particles brewing in the air above the Alberta oil
sands is one of the most prolific sources of air pollution in North
America, often exceeding the total emissions from Canada’s largest city,
federal scientists have discovered.
The finding marks the first time researchers have quantified the role of
oil sands operations in generating secondary organic aerosols, a poorly
understood class of pollutants that have been linked to a range of
adverse health effects.
The result adds to the known impact of the oil sands, including as a
source of carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. It also
comes on the same day that the Bank of Canada delivered a sobering
message about the country’s economy, saying the devastating Alberta
wildfires that hit Fort McMurray – leading to production cuts in the oil
industry and the destruction of thousands of buildings – will cause a
drop in Canada’s gross domestic product in the second quarter.
Given the economic circumstances and the political sensitivities
currently surrounding the oil sands, the air pollutant study, published
Wednesday in the journal Nature, offered the strongest test yet of the
Trudeau government’s promise to allow scientists in federal labs to
speak freely with journalists about their results.
The pollutants the scientist measured are minute particles that are
created when chemical-laden vapours from the mining and processing of
bitumen react with oxygen in the atmosphere and are transformed into
solids that can drift on the wind for days.
While researchers have long thought that the oil sands must be a source
of such particles, the new results show that their impact on air quality
is significant and of potential concern to communities that are downwind.
“It’s another aspect that can and probably should be considered” in
assessing the oil sands’ environmental footprint, said John Liggio, an
atmospheric chemist with Environment and Climate Change Canada and lead
author of the study.
Using an aircraft bristling with sophisticated sensors, Dr. Liggio and
his colleagues flew back and forth repeatedly through the largely
invisible plume of emissions that extends from the oil sands in order to
record the concentrations of a wide range of pollutants. The
measurements were made in the summer of 2013, and gathered during nearly
100 hours of flying time over the oil sands and adjacent boreal forest.
“It’s not for the faint of heart – or stomach,” Dr. Liggio said of the
low-level flights he and his colleagues endured during the study.
The airborne data, supported by further work with computer models and
laboratory experiments, show that 45 to 84 tonnes of secondary organic
aerosols are formed by the oil sands a day. By comparison, Canada’s
largest urban area, which includes Toronto and surrounding
municipalities, generates 67 tonnes a day, much of it derived from car
and truck exhaust.
“The take-away is that there’s more that’s emitted into the atmosphere
than we’ve fully appreciated,” said Jeffrey Brook, an air-quality
researcher with Environment and Climate Change Canada who participated
in the oil sands study.
In 2014, the federal and provincial governments jointly issued standards
for long-term average exposure to fine particulate matter. The emissions
of secondary organic aerosols measured from the oil sands do not appear
to exceed those long-term standards, but they do suggest that people
living within reach of the emissions are experiencing elevated levels of
fine particles in the air they breathe.
Scientists are still trying to understand the complex health effects
those particles can trigger when inhaled, but they have been linked in
previous studies to lung cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
The oil sands aerosols are also similar in abundance to those that U.S.
researchers recorded rising from the massive oil spill caused by the
Deepwater Horizon drilling-rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
“However, the oil spill lasted a few months. The Alberta oil sand
operations are an ongoing industrial activity,” said Joost de Gouw, a
research physicist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration who led the oil spill measurements.
Dr. de Gouw called the Canadian team’s work “convincing,” and added that
air-quality researchers were becoming increasingly interested in the
formation and effects of secondary organic aerosols, which constitute a
growing fraction of the air pollution generated in North America and
Europe from industrial sources as sulphur emissions decrease.
Terry Abel, the director of oil sands at the Canadian Association of
Petroleum Producers, said the new study will help the energy industry
better understand the origins of the particles.
“We already know there are particles in the atmosphere. This is about
where did they actually come from and how were they formed,” he said in
an interview. “If we’re seeing a particular effect from particulate
matter, this now gives us some clue as to what we would need to do to
reduce those emissions or mitigate [them].”
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s government says it supports the oil
sands industry and argues that the province will have an advantage if it
can better prove it takes environmental side effects seriously.
The Nature study is one of the most high-profile scientific papers to
come out of Environment Canada’s air-quality research division in some
years. Dr. Liggio and his colleagues responded directly to questions
from The Globe and Mail without a lengthy waiting period for permission
to conduct interviews and without government officials monitoring their
calls. Such practices were routine under the former Conservative
government whenever journalists asked to speak with federal scientists
about their published research.
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