Hazardous Air Pollutants
Hazardous air pollutants, also known as Air Toxics or
by the acronym, HAPS, are approximately 200 air pollutants
identified by EPA which, when their emissions are not controlled through
available technology, are most likely to have the greatest impact on
ambient air quality and human health. The Emissions Inventory
Program collects data every three years on emissions of hazardous air
pollutants from nearly 500 facilities in Maine.
Information about reporting emissions of hazardous air pollutants can
be found on the Reporting Requirements page.
A complete list of hazardous air pollutant chemicals and compounds can
be found in DEP Rule's Chapter
137, "Emission Statements," Appendix A.
How do hazardous air pollutants affect human health and the environment? Where
do they come from? What is being done to control them? Visit
the DEP's Air Toxics Program to learn more.
Publicly-Owned Treatment Works
(POTWs)
In reviewing emissions from Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWs),
the DEP has found that several plants are required to report air emissions
because they release acrolein in excess of the reporting threshold.
The EPA-developed emission factor for acrolein is 0.00447 lbs per million
gallons of flow; the reporting threshold for acrolein in Chapter 137
is 10 lbs/year. Therefore, facilities with flows greater than an average
daily flow of 6.13 MGD are subject to the triennial, hazardous air pollutant
reporting requirements, unless they have site specific data indicating
that they are still below the 10 lb/yr threshold.
The emissions reports for Calendar Year 2005 are due on July 1, 2006
. To assist in this process, the Emissions Inventory Program will access
the flow information facilities submit on their discharge monitoring
reports (DMRs) and apply EPA-developed emission factors to calculate
the emissions. A report will then be generated and sent to the facilities
to certify.
The DEP has developed a number of materials and provides the following
links to further explain this requirement.
top of page
Useful links
- Maine Air Toxics Initiative - Maine DEP (http://www.state.me.us/dep/air/toxics/mati.htm)
The Maine Air Toxics Initiative is a facilitated stakeholder process
aimed at verifying whether or not the national air toxics assessment
results seem reasonable, and if so, identification of which air toxics
are the most responsible for creating health risks, the source of
those pollutants, and creation of cost effective solutions to reduce
the risk.
- ChemFinder.Com (http://chemfinder.cambridgesoft.com/result.asp)
includes a free search engine for basic queries, and subscription
based searches of their scientific databases for more sophisticated
searches. ChemFinder has been providing free chemical searching
to hundreds of thousands of scientists since 1995.
top of page
