Air Toxics Health Effects and Development of Standards

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Air Toxics Health Effects and Development of
Standards
Matt Fraser Civil and Environmental Engineering
Department
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Overview

• Review of Ambient Measurements of Air Toxics
• Current Air Toxics Regulations
• Research Agenda for HEI Funded Project
• (Air Toxics Apportionment Work at Rice
  University)

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Current Air Toxics Regulations

• Emission standards NESHAPs (Title V CAAA 1990)
• regulate pollution control equipment for
  specific
• industries and sources of hazardous air
  pollutants
• Does not preclude state regulations of ambient
• concentrations of air toxics
• Texas has established Effects Screening Levels
  (ESLs)
• that are evaluated in permitting process
• usually set at 1 of threshold limit values

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Other State Approaches

• California
• 10-6 carcinogenicity risk plus reference exposure
  level established
• by the California Office of Environmental Health
  Hazard Assessment
• Connecticut
• Hazardous limiting values established as ambient
  air concentrations
• by Commissioner of Health Services
• Louisiana
• Carcinogenicity risk not to exceed 10-4 for
  regulated HAPS
• Massachusetts
• 115 health based allowable ambient levels

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Other State Approaches

• Michigan
• Initial Threshold Screening Level set by State.
  Then carcinogenicity not to exceed 10-6.
• New Jersey
• Carcinogenicity risk not to exceed 10-6 for
  regulated HAPS
• North Carolina
• State has set acceptable ambient pollutant
  levels. If exceed these levels outside facility
  property, must show maximum feasible control.
• Rhode Island
• Ambient concentrations not to exceed benchmarks
  set by State based on RfC from EPAs IRIS, CARBs
  REL and New York acceptable levels

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HEI Funding

• One year funding for six academic institutions
• Rice, Baylor College of Medicine, UT School of
  Public Health, UTMB Galveston, Univ. Houston,
  Texas Southern Univ.
• Five Tasks
• -Identify and collect air toxics standards from
  other states and other governmental agencies
• -Determine health effect basis for existing
  standards in other jurisdictions
• -Review toxicological endpoint information and
  epidemiological studies of health effects of
  air toxics
• -Compile local data on air toxics sources and
  ambient levels
• -Provide guidance on the chemicals that are of
  concern, their health impacts, and how
  standards could be implemented

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Positive Matrix Factorization of Auto-GC Data for
Source Attribution

• Use statistical correlations in time series to
  determine sources of VOCs
• Studied three sites Wallisville Rd, HRM-3 and
  Lynchberg Ferry

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Representative Source Profiles
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Representative Source Profiles
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Lynchberg Source Attribution

• Refinery 115 ppbC
• Petrochemical Production 83 ppbC
• Gasoline Evaporation 71 ppbc
• Natural Gas 68 ppbC
• Aromatics 63 ppbC
• Other Industrial 13 ppbC

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Temporal Variability in Source Strength
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Combining Source and with Met DataConditional
Probability Function
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Comparison to Inventory TCEQ Speciated Point
Source Data
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Petrochemical Conditional Probability Function
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Petrochemical Point Source Emission Inventory Data
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2003 Benzene Data Annual Concentration vs. Wind
Direction
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2003 Benzene Data at HRM-3 Comparison of Ambient
Data versus Inventory
Ambient Data
Inventory Data