Characterization and source apportionment of airborne particulate elements in the Athabasca oil sands region

Exploring the Influence of Industrial and Climatic Variables on Communities of Benthic Macroinvertebrates Collected in Streams and Lakes in Canada’s Oil Sands Region

“…The results of this analysis suggest the mass of stored petcoke at HM, SML, and SBM are not widely influential although petcoke dust dislodged by wind is likely present in areas beyond the stockpiles [8,9]. However, the patterns of deposition and likely sources can vary by study medium and potentially season [11,18,19,21,22,78,89] and the mass of stored petcoke is one of many potentially relevant factors determining the wind erosion of stockpiled material [90][91][92][93]. Additionally, an effect of wind-blown dusts on benthic invertebrates may be better associated with MSWS than with industrial variables, such as the mass of stored petroleum coke.…”

“…While the drop in particulate emissions after the installation of the ESP at SBM has been documented in lake sediments and in snow [7,10], a discernible influence of the combustion of petroleum coke likely remains in snow samples collected between 2011 and 2016 [8]. Although larger particles are present in the summer suggesting contributions from dust [17][18][19]78], the size distributions of particles in snow [79,80], the particle sizes and chemical composition of petcoke fly ashes [13][14][15]81], the efficiency of generic ESPs [82], and size distributions of particles emitted from stacks [27] suggest the influence of petroleum coke combustion on the deposition of some CoCs in the OSR. Based on the results here, many studies detecting changes in the deposition of CoCs may be identifying petroleum coke fly ash from Suncor's coke-fired power plant [7,10,11,20,22,23,33,75,83,84] which, via the component CoCs [85,86], may also be influencing benthic communities in the OSR.…”

“…For example, signals associated with emissions and deposition of sub-micron microcrystals of petcoke fly ash, despite their proportional enrichment of contaminants, such as V, Ni, and Ti [13][14][15], may be masked in water quality surveys by larger, naturally occurring particles with greater proportional mass contributions to the concentrations of these elements in water samples [39][40][41]. While other natural phenomena may also impede the detection of industrial signals, e.g., [98], intensity of industrial activities associated with the release of CoCs may overcome this potential masking and may be used to identify both regional and local impacts of facilities in other studies [16][17][18][19]74,[102][103][104], assuming transport mechanics are consistent over time.…”

“…First, the work here suggests facility-level performance may be a potent source of information on environmental influence from the industry and that future work may need to incorporate these data, e.g., [110]. Second, monitoring stations in the OSR are often selected based on their proximity and/or location downstream of oil sands facilities [42], but the analyses here and elsewhere [18,19,75] suggest a combination of both local and regional stressors may affect benthic invertebrates residing in streams and lakes [6,[13][14][15][106][107][108]111,112]. Consequently, analyses based on activity at adjacent facilities may not encapsulate the factors driving local variability and additional work may need to account for differing exposure pathways among habitats [7,8,10,11,21,75,94,[113][114][115].…”

“…Since the opening of the SBM and SML facilities, they have been expanded and new operations have also opened [8]. As the industrial development intensified, studies also expanded and identified the influence of a broader set of sources affecting the environment, including haul road, petroleum coke, and other fugitive dust emissions associated with SBM and SML, but also with the opening of the new mines, technological differences among the facilities, including the opening of in situ operations, and changes at facilities over time [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. The work also shows the greatest loading of CoCs to the environment typically occurs in the minable region within ~25 km of the original bitumen upgrading facilities at SML and SBM, e.g., [10,25,28], but the influence of industrial activity on CoCs is not always apparent [8].…”