Question:
I have a student using data from the National Pollutant Release Inventory (http://ec.gc.ca/inrp-npri/donnees-data/index.cfm?do=facility_history&lang=En&opt_npri_id=0000003419&opt_report_year=2016). She is wondering if data in the Volatile organic compounds (NA-M16) section includes data from other VOCs also included on the page (e.g. Xylene which is also on the page).
Answer:
Volatile organic compounds are reportable as a group under Part 4 of the NPRI reporting requirements and it does include data from other VOCs, such as xylene. A number of individual VOCs are reportable under Part 1A and Part 5 of the NPRI reporting requirements and care should be taken to avoid double or triple counting the same VOCs reportable to multiple NPRI parts. Part 5 substances are speciated VOCs and are essentially a breakdown of the total amount of VOCs.
For the linked facility, xylene is reported under Part 1A and Part 5 and they are included in the Total VOCs reported under Part 4. Part 5 substances can be reached through the query site by clicking on any year of the Volatile Organic Compounds table. However, the query site doesn’t show the amount of part 5 substances releases from stacks above 50 meters. This data can be found on our Single Year Tabular Data or the complete MS Access database.
