Monitoring Imperial Oil
AIR POLLUTION MONITORING IN CHEMICAL VALLEY
How is Imperial Oil's Air Pollution Monitored?
There are multiple air monitor systems in the Chemical Valley area, each of which can provide some information about pollution levels, but each of which has important limits.
Most monitors give measures about pollution levels without being able to say much about where that pollution is coming from.
Monitors also tend to tell us about short-term exposures, not long term.
Lastly, monitors measure, but do not reduce emissions. They reflect the government's emphasis on pollution data over pollution control.
Imperial Oil Fenceline Monitoring of Benzene
Imperial Oil’s fenceline monitors can tell us something about airborne benzene levels.
These fenceline monitors are the only sources of publicly available monitoring information that says something specific about Imperial Oil’s emissions in Sarnia.
Measurements began in January 2018. The monitors detect how much airborne benzene has passed by that section of fence over the last 14 days. The numbers are updated for the public online every 60 days using a pdf spreadsheet. Thus, the community does not have real-time access to benzene monitoring data. Moreover, monitors at the fenceline may miss emissions that come out of stacks pushing benzene farther up into the air.
View the public reporting site.
Read the September 2019 data here.
Imperial Oil and several other facilities in Sarnia have a special industry-specific benzene standard that does not require them to meet the provincial standard, and instead asks them to monitor their benzene levels at their fenceline and make progress in reducing them. Thus, Imperial Oil and other facilities have permission to pollute at levels higher than the new provincial standard. The new provincial standard as of 2016 (updated form the 1974 standard) is 0.45 μg/m3 averaged over a year.
As Ecojustice has reported, the benzene levels reported by Imperial Oil’s 2018 fenceline monitors were well over the provincial standard. Its monitors ranged from 1.32 - 9.21 ug/m3 a year in 2018. (footnote 1)
Aamjiwnaang First Nation Monitor
The Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Park monitors (previously called the The Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change) working with Aamjiwnaang First Nation established an air monitor in Aamjiwnaang on September 2008.
View Aamjiwnaang's Air Monitoring Webpage
Since 2016, this air monitoring includes both real time and non-continuous monitoring that is posted online via the Clear Air Sarnia and Area website. The Aamjiwnaang monitor does not say anything specific about Imperial Oil’s pollution emissions, but rather about cumulative emissions from many facilities that pass over this particular station.
The Aamjiwnaang Air Monitoring Station covers the most substances of all the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Park monitors in the region.
Clean Air Sarnia and Area (CASA) Monitors
In 2016, the CASA network of monitors was put into place. It includes publicly available information from a network of monitors, including some real-time monitoring, and some non-continuous monitoring.
The network includes the monitor at Aamjiwnaang First Nation and 6 other monitors. One of these monitors is run solely by the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, one by the Ministry and Aamjiwnaang, and the other four are run by the Sarnia-Lambton Environmental Association, an industry affiliated organization.
The monitors vary in what they detect, as is summarized here. A few monitors detect many chemicals, and some monitors detect only two chemicals.
The CASA website includes a map of the 6 monitor station, where each station is color coded according to a legend that rates the air quality Very Poor, Poor, Moderate, and Good.
The CASA color coding system has come under strong criticism as misleading. The color of the map station marker only reveals the status currently rather than overall. Moreover, Ecojustice has analyzed the coding system and found that the results are particularly misleading when it comes to sulphur dioxide because the CASA is based on standards the provincial government has admitted don’t protect human health.
The categories of Very Poor, Poor and Moderate do not change color unless monitoring detects measures greater than 100, 10, 1 times the hourly standard of emissions. Thus, exposures must be more than 10 times the provincial standard before they are ranked as poor.
The monitor closest to the Imperial Oil complex and refinery is on Scott Road. This monitor collects the most limited information in the network. It monitors real-time emissions of Total Reduced Sulphur and Ethylene only.
Sarnia Lambton Environmental Association (SLEA) Monitors
SLEA is an association of 20 local industries that have been undertaking air-monitoring since 2006, and has a network of seven monitors that measure only six categories of contaminants: sulphur dioxide, ozone, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, respirable particulate matter, total reduced sulphur.
As an industry-run monitoring network, it is not an independent source of air quality data.
Beginning in 2016, the SLEA monitor results are reported through CASA website.
Notes
Elaine McDonald, “Return to Chemical Valley” (Toronto: Ecojustice, June 2019), https://www.ecojustice.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Return-to-Chemical-Valley_FINAL.pdf.
