Alberta's oilsands industry is a huge source of harmful air pollution, study says

[mentalfloss]

Alberta's oilsands industry is a huge source of harmful air pollution, study says

Alberta's oilsands industry is one of the biggest sources in North America of harmful air pollutants called secondary organic aerosols (SOAs), a new Environment Canada study has found.

SOAs are formed when volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted directly by the oilsands are exposed to sunlight and react with oxygen and other compounds in the atmosphere. VOCs emitted by cars, other industrial processes, and plants can also generate SOAs.

Because SOAs are relatively heavy, they form particles and become a significant component of pollution known as "particulate matter," or PM.

According to the World Health Organization, particulate matter is linked to respiratory problems such as asthma, along with increased deaths from cardiovascular disease and lung cancer.

The new study reports Alberta's oilsands generate 45 to 84 tonnes of SOAs a day, comparable to daily output of the Greater Toronto Area, the largest metropolis in Canada – even though the oilsands take up a relatively small area, geographically.

That would make Alberta's oilsands either the largest or second largest source of SOAs in Canada, and one of the top 10 in all of North America, says Environment and Climate Change Canada research scientist John Liggio, lead author of the report published today in the journal Nature.

Shao-Meng Li, another Environment Canada research scientist and principal investigator for the project, said the researchers knew that the oilsands were producing SOAs. "What surprised us, I think to an extent, was the magnitude."

It appears that the oilsands are unusually efficient at making SOAs compared to other sources.

Once airborne, the pollutants can be blown as far away as Ontario before being deposited in soil and water, although most probably remains in Alberta. The highest concentrations of oilsands SOAs are likely to end up in Edmonton, and the levels from the oilsands may be higher than the levels produced by the city itself, Liggio said.

Alberta's oilsands industry is a huge source of harmful air pollution, study says - Technology & Science - CBC News

 

[B00Mer]

A minuscule fraction compared to the USA and China's pollution.

However, I would love to see and energy corridor reaching for BC to NB, stretching across Canada, power-lines, pipelines, ethernet.

I'd also like to see Hydrogen Cars and a Hydrogen Highway stretching across Canada.

We can't gut our Industries and resources, but we can offset it like they have done in Norway.

 

[lone wolf]

So how much air pollution do you get from a gravel road?

 

[PoliticalNick]

I'll give you credit for consistency. You just keep going on and on about the industry that supports the economy in this province and subsidizes your welfare check.

A few untruths in your article...
Almost none would wind up in Edmonton because it is southwest of Ft Mac and the prevailing winds carry anything almost due east into the middle of nowhere.
If these pollutants are heavy they will drop rapidly meaning getting them to Ontario would be almost impossible.

I'm glad to see you won't let real facts get in the way of a good attempt to portray the oil industry as bad.

On another note....please tell me someone as rabid as yourself walks everywhere and has no plastic of any kind in your life and grows all your own food and refuses any product or service that has any connection with oil for production or transportation. I mean if you feel so strongly you should eliminate 100% of oil products and services from your life. If you don't do that then shut up and f*ck off!

 

[DaSleeper]

Hypocrites abound in the global warming religion......

Follow my direction.... not my lead....

 

[mentalfloss]

I'll give you credit for consistency. You just keep going on and on about the industry that supports the economy in this province and subsidizes your welfare check.

A few untruths in your article...
Almost none would wind up in Edmonton because it is southwest of Ft Mac and the prevailing winds carry anything almost due east into the middle of nowhere.
If these pollutants are heavy they will drop rapidly meaning getting them to Ontario would be almost impossible.

I'm glad to see you won't let real facts get in the way of a good attempt to portray the oil industry as bad.

On another note....please tell me someone as rabid as yourself walks everywhere and has no plastic of any kind in your life and grows all your own food and refuses any product or service that has any connection with oil for production or transportation. I mean if you feel so strongly you should eliminate 100% of oil products and services from your life. If you don't do that then shut up and f*ck off!

Triggered much?

I never said we should give up plastic or get rid of the oilsands.

More info. being released on this..


The aerosols are minute particles, roughly 1/10th the diameter of a human hair or less, 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, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, 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 environmental footprint of Canada’s most productive oil region, said John Liggio, an atmospheric chemist with Environment and Climate Change Canada and lead author on the study.

The result adds to the known impacts of the oil sands, including as a source of carbon emissions which contribute to climate change.

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 is exciting, I will say that. But 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 secondary organic aerosols are formed in the atmosphere downwind of the oil sands at the rate of 45 to 84 tonnes a day. By comparison, Canada’s largest urban area, which is 10 times larger and includes Toronto and surrounding municipalities, generates 67 tonnes a day, much of it derived from car and truck exhaust.

The oil-sands aerosols are 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. But they are ever-present.

“The oil spill lasted a few months, and the Alberta oil-sand operations are an ongoing industrial activity,” said Joost de Gouw, a Colorado-based 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 an increasing fraction of the air pollution generated in North America and Europe from industrial sources as sulphur emissions decrease.

“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. “There is a need to continue to improve our knowledge about where these emissions go.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...r-pollution-in-north-america/article30151841/

 

[lone wolf]

Have you ever lived downwind from an asphalt plant - the ones that Wynne promised will be busy with her infrastructure magic?

 

[captain morgan]

I say we keep on diggin' until we eradicate every one of those harmful particles and bring them to a Sunny Ways justice.

 

[MHz]

Wait till it becomes the only material that is suitable to burying Japan's 20+ nuclear reactors. Luckily most can be covered before they go bank and the bang in this case drops a few million tons of oil based cement that wicks heats faster the hotter it gets.

I say we keep on diggin' until we eradicate every one of those harmful particles and bring them to a Sunny Ways justice.

You sound like the last Bankster just before the jailhouse door closed on him for attempted genocide.

 

[captain morgan]

Banksters don't buy into Sunny Ways... You were probably thinking of eco-tardsters

 

[MHz]

Think of the cleanup cost the Feds will have to kick in, oh wait, that was before the $5B fire. Be cheaper to build a hi-speed rail and sell the blueprints to Ontario while they are still sharpening their pencils. The workers are then long distance commuters and FT Mac can be a tourist attraction before the trees reclaim her.

 

[mentalfloss]

Yea Fort McMurray is going to cost a ton of money to fix.

Climate change doesn't give a fukk about us.

 

[captain morgan]

 

[mentalfloss]

 

[captain morgan]

Elbowgate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Curious Cdn]

We live down wind from the coal-fired Ohio Valley. We hsve the crappiest air in the country. Whatever we are producing is a drop in the bucket compared to what the mountains of coal in the Yangze Valley snd Pennsyltuckey are kicking out.

 

[mentalfloss]

Elbowgate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Non issue.

 

[JamesBondo]

Alberta's oilsands industry is a huge source of harmful air pollution, study says

Alberta's oilsands industry is one of the biggest sources in North America of harmful air pollutants called secondary organic aerosols (SOAs), a new Environment Canada study has found.

SOAs are formed when volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted directly by the oilsands are exposed to sunlight and react with oxygen and other compounds in the atmosphere. VOCs emitted by cars, other industrial processes, and plants can also generate SOAs.

Because SOAs are relatively heavy, they form particles and become a significant component of pollution known as "particulate matter," or PM.

According to the World Health Organization, particulate matter is linked to respiratory problems such as asthma, along with increased deaths from cardiovascular disease and lung cancer.

The new study reports Alberta's oilsands generate 45 to 84 tonnes of SOAs a day, comparable to daily output of the Greater Toronto Area, the largest metropolis in Canada – even though the oilsands take up a relatively small area, geographically.

That would make Alberta's oilsands either the largest or second largest source of SOAs in Canada, and one of the top 10 in all of North America, says Environment and Climate Change Canada research scientist John Liggio, lead author of the report published today in the journal Nature.

Shao-Meng Li, another Environment Canada research scientist and principal investigator for the project, said the researchers knew that the oilsands were producing SOAs. "What surprised us, I think to an extent, was the magnitude."

It appears that the oilsands are unusually efficient at making SOAs compared to other sources.

Once airborne, the pollutants can be blown as far away as Ontario before being deposited in soil and water, although most probably remains in Alberta. The highest concentrations of oilsands SOAs are likely to end up in Edmonton, and the levels from the oilsands may be higher than the levels produced by the city itself, Liggio said.

Alberta's oilsands industry is a huge source of harmful air pollution, study says - Technology & Science - CBC News

So what you are saying is I am a pathetically linked to causes of ashma and lung cancer, and bease the oil I use comes from Brazil, not one canadian family benefits from my dreadful habit because I Don't buy Alberta oil.

I feel so dirty.

 

[MHz]

Speaking of insurance, they have been strangely quiet so are they trying to duck out rather than say a $5B bond is going to be issued to rebuild the city so it is open before fire season ends?

 

[darkbeaver]

Triggered much?

I never said we should give up plastic or get rid of the oilsands.

More info. being released on this..


The aerosols are minute particles, roughly 1/10th the diameter of a human hair or less, 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, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, 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 environmental footprint of Canada’s most productive oil region, said John Liggio, an atmospheric chemist with Environment and Climate Change Canada and lead author on the study.

The result adds to the known impacts of the oil sands, including as a source of carbon emissions which contribute to climate change.

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 is exciting, I will say that. But 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 secondary organic aerosols are formed in the atmosphere downwind of the oil sands at the rate of 45 to 84 tonnes a day. By comparison, Canada’s largest urban area, which is 10 times larger and includes Toronto and surrounding municipalities, generates 67 tonnes a day, much of it derived from car and truck exhaust.

The oil-sands aerosols are 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. But they are ever-present.

“The oil spill lasted a few months, and the Alberta oil-sand operations are an ongoing industrial activity,” said Joost de Gouw, a Colorado-based 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 an increasing fraction of the air pollution generated in North America and Europe from industrial sources as sulphur emissions decrease.

“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. “There is a need to continue to improve our knowledge about where these emissions go.”

Oil sands found to be a leading source of air pollution in North America - The Globe and Mail

Jesus Christ man you're obcessed with a bit of smoke, look up the discharge of pollutants frum a minor volcanic eruption. You should be supporting legislation to curb volcanoes and stop wasteing your gonads on pissy little issues that mean nothing in the scheme of things. Uou're a talented person who is in danger of turning to drugs. You have my number.We can fix you up.