Fugitive emissions of polycyclic aromatic compounds from an oil sands tailings pond based on fugacity and inverse dispersion flux calculations

Moradi, Maryam; You, Yuan; Hung, Hayley; Li, James; Alexandrou, Nick; Moussa, Samar G.; Jantunen, Liisa M.; Robitaille, Rachelle; Staebler, R. M.

doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2020.116115

Cited by 21 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…The results of the current analysis strongly support the importance of atmospheric deposition of CoCs as a primary exposure pathway in the OSR [3] and beyond, e.g., [24,105]. While stack emissions estimated by SBM-FPU and SML-FPU may influence benthic communities, contributions from other atmospheric pathways may also be captured by the industrial metrics, such as CBP and SCP, including particulate or gaseous emissions from mine fleets, mine faces, and tailings ponds [106][107][108], suggesting the industrial metrics used here are complex surrogates of industrial activity. The inferred influence of industrial activity via atmospheric deposition was, however, also likely accompanied by local effects associated with land disturbance.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 67%

“…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].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Arciszewski

2021

Environments

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Identifying and tracking the influence of industrial activities on streams and lakes is a priority for monitoring in Canada’s oil sands region (OSR). While differences in indicators are often found in waterbodies adjacent to mining facilities, the confounding influence of natural exposures to bitumen and other stressors can affect the identification of industrial effects. However, recent work suggests metrics of industrial activity at individual facilities, including production and fuel consumption, may be used in site-specific analyses to identify influence of the industry as a whole as well as individual operations. This study further examined the potential relationships between industrial and climatic variables on benthic communities from 13 streams and 4 lakes using publicly available data from the minable region and the Elastic Net (EN) variable selection technique. From the full set of possible industrial and climate variables, the EN commonly identified the negative influence of plant and fuel use of petroleum coke at the Suncor Basemine on benthic communities in streams and lakes. The fuel/plant use of petroleum coke at Suncor likely reflects the emission and regional deposition of delayed coke fly ash. Among the other industrial variables, crude bitumen production at Syncrude Mildred Lake and other facilities, steam injection rates, and petroleum coke stockpiling were also selected for some benthic invertebrate indices at some sites. Land disturbance metrics were also occasionally selected, but the analyses largely support the predominant influence of industrial facilities via (inferred) atmospheric pathways. While climate variables were also commonly selected by EN and follow-up work is needed, this study suggests that integrating industrial performance data into analyses of biota using a site-specific approach may have broad applicability in environmental monitoring in the OSR. More specifically, the approach used here may both resolve the long-standing challenge of natural confounding influences on monitoring the status of streams in the OSR and track the influence of industrial activities in biota below critical effect sizes.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 67%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Arciszewski

2021

Environments

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“…Although the effects of precipitation on stream chemistry are well-established [64,94], the data here and elsewhere [55] further suggest potential associations with the status of biological indicators [39]. However, as mentioned already, similar interactions between industrial activity and environmental variables may also extend to air temperature [75,76].…”

Section: Influence Of 'Mixture' Variablessupporting

confidence: 54%

“…Overall, the analyses reinforce the importance of accounting for background drivers of variability in temporal analyses of fish health (e.g., [53,54]) and how identifying these potential relationships improves on previous approaches [20]. There may, however, also be a role of temperature in greater emissions from some sources, such as tailings ponds and mine faces [75,76], suggesting that other studies may be needed to further improve the monitoring results.…”

Section: Variables Selected By Elastic Net Regularized Regression Inf...mentioning

confidence: 60%

“…Assessing the impacts of atmospheric deposition on the health of biota living in streams is also affected by the transport mechanisms linking industrial facilities and exposure environments. For example, the emission and deposition rates of materials from some sources may also be affected by climatic conditions, including wind speeds and precipitation [32,75,76], while these same processes may also affect their post-deposition mobilization and transport to waterbodies [88]. To account for this possibility, additional 'mixture' variables (along with an expanded list of environmental covariates), such as spring and summer precipitation, was also included in this analysis and the ENV+IND models.…”

Section: Influence Of 'Mixture' Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Incorporating Industrial and Climatic Covariates into Analyses of Fish Health Indicators Measured in a Stream in Canada’s Oil Sands Region

2022

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Industrial and other human activities in Canada’s oil sands region (OSR) influence the environment. However, these impacts can be challenging to separate from natural stresses in flowing waters by comparing upstream reference sites to downstream exposure locations. For example, health indicators of lake chub (Couesius plumbeus) compared between locations in the Ells River (Upper and Lower) in 2013 to 2015 and 2018 demonstrated statistical differences. To further examine the potential sources of variation in fish, we also analyzed data at sites over time. When fish captured in 2018 were compared to pooled reference years (2013–2015), results indicated multiple differences in fish, but most of the differences disappeared when environmental covariates were included in the Elastic Net (EN) regularized regression models. However, when industrial covariates were included separately in the EN, the large differences in 2018 also disappeared, also suggesting the potential influence of these covariables on the health of fish. Further ENs incorporating both environmental and industrial covariates along with other variables which may describe industrial and natural influences, such as spring or summer precipitation and summer wind speeds and distance-based penalty factors, also support some of the suspected and potential mechanisms of impact. Further exploratory analyses simulating changes from zero and the mean (industrial) activity levels using the regression equations respectively suggest effects exceeding established critical effect sizes (CES) for fish measurements may already be present or effects may occur with small future changes in some industrial activities. Additional simulations also suggest that changing regional hydrological and thermal regimes in the future may also cause changes in fish measurements exceeding the CESs. The results of this study suggest the wide applicability of the approach for monitoring the health of fish in the OSR and beyond. The results also suggest follow-up work required to further evaluate the veracity of the suggested relationships identified in this analysis.

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A decadal synthesis of atmospheric emissions, ambient air quality, and deposition in the oil sands region

Horb

Wentworth

Makar

et al. 2021

Integr Envir Assess & Manag

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This review is part of a series synthesizing peer‐reviewed literature from the past decade on environmental monitoring in the oil sands region (OSR) of northeastern Alberta. It focuses on atmospheric emissions, air quality, and deposition in and downwind of the OSR. Most published monitoring and research activities were concentrated in the surface‐mineable region in the Athabasca OSR. Substantial progress has been made in understanding oil sands (OS)‐related emission sources using multiple approaches: airborne measurements, satellite measurements, source emission testing, deterministic modeling, and source apportionment modeling. These approaches generally yield consistent results, indicating OS‐related sources are regional contributors to nearly all air pollutants. Most pollutants exhibit enhanced air concentrations within ~20 km of surface‐mining activities, with some enhanced >100 km downwind. Some pollutants (e.g., sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides) undergo transformations as they are transported through the atmosphere. Deposition rates of OS‐related substances primarily emitted as fugitive dust are enhanced within ~30 km of surface‐mining activities, whereas gaseous and fine particulate emissions have a more diffuse deposition enhancement pattern extending hundreds of kilometers downwind. In general, air quality guidelines are not exceeded, although these single‐pollutant thresholds are not comprehensive indicators of air quality. Odor events have occurred in communities near OS industrial activities, although it can be difficult to attribute events to specific pollutants or sources. Nitrogen, sulfur, polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs), and base cations from OS sources occur in the environment, but explicit and deleterious responses of organisms to these pollutants are not as apparent across all study environments; details of biological monitoring are discussed further in other papers in this special series. However, modeling of critical load exceedances suggests that, at continued emission levels, ecological change may occur in future. Knowledge gaps and recommendations for future work to address these gaps are also presented. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:333–360. © 2021 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).

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Fugitive emissions of polycyclic aromatic compounds from an oil sands tailings pond based on fugacity and inverse dispersion flux calculations

Cited by 21 publications

References 48 publications

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

Incorporating Industrial and Climatic Covariates into Analyses of Fish Health Indicators Measured in a Stream in Canada’s Oil Sands Region

A decadal synthesis of atmospheric emissions, ambient air quality, and deposition in the oil sands region

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