Alberta’s oilsands are releasing potentially hazardous compounds into the atmosphere at rates dozens of times higher than official estimates, newly published research suggests.
The authors say the massive releases of volatile organic compounds, separate from the industry’s climate-altering emissions, raise concerns about what those hundreds of complex, highly reactive chemicals are doing in the environment, The Canadian Press reports.
“It’s difficult to know,” said John Liggio, an atmospheric scientist with Environment Canada who worked with a group from Yale University on the paper, which was published January 25 in the journal Science. “Some of these compounds could be toxic.”
Industry figures suggest the oilsands release about 68 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, more than 10% of all Canadian emissions. Liggio’s lab has suggested that figure could be closer to 100 million tonnes.
But more is released than carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas.
The current paper is the first to make field-based measurements of the release of what are called volatile organic compounds—”every molecule that has carbon as a backbone,” Liggio said.
Previously, the release of those chemicals has been tracked using modelled estimates, exhaust stack measurements, and a few measurements in the field.
Liggio’s study suggests volatile organic compounds are being released from the oilsands at rates that are anywhere from 20 to 63 times higher than the figures in the national pollutant inventory. The paper suggests those emissions from the oilsands are roughly equal to the entire output of such chemicals from everywhere else in Canada.
The three largest sources—Syncrude’s Mildred Lake facility, Suncor Energy, and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.—emit between 200,000 and 500,000 tonnes of carbon in those chemicals annually.
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