Great Lakes Regional Air Toxic Emissions Inventory

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 make them particularly susceptible to accumulation of toxic chemicals. Air emissions are a significant source for a number of pollutants that eventually accumulate in the lakes and the surrounding environments. To address regional atmospheric deposition and emission reduction strategies, a complete, high-quality regional emissions inventory is required. The Great Lakes Regional Air Toxic Emissions Inventory program centers upon quantifying regional 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. Program activities have included the development and refinement of an agreed-up regional Protocol, design, implementation, and update of project software, creation of an internet data access tool, and production of triennial regional inventories for the following calendar years: 1993, 1996, 1999 and 2002, with intervening updates for 1997, 1998 and 2001.

Steering Committee

A Steering Committee, comprised of one or several members from each of the participating state or provincial air quality control agencies, leads development of inventories and quality assures the compiled data. Each participating jurisdiction benefits through the Committee's shared expertise, capacity building, access to other jurisdiction's data, and data dissemination.

Each jurisdiction develops inventories according to their own requirements. If not for this project, the state and provincial inventories across the Great Lakes basin would be largely incompatible. This project brings Great Lakes states and province of Ontario staff together in an attempt to develop a consistent and comprehensive regional inventory 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) anywhere in the jurisdictions bordering the Great Lakes. The project partners with other experts in the atmospheric deposition field to share knowledge and enhance the region's ability to characterize the impact of atmospheric deposition.

Results