Regional Air Quality Implications of Volatile Chemical Emissions in Some North American Cities

Amirashkan Askari, ARTHUR W. H. CHAN, University of Toronto

     Abstract Number: 335
     Working Group: Urban Aerosols

Abstract
Volatile chemical products (VCPs) have attracted attention as an emerging class of emission sources for Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Given that most VCP studies have been focused on the United States, researching the air quality impacts of VCPs in other jurisdictions is of particular importance. In this work, we utilized a bottom-up approach to infer the annual VOC emissions from VCP sources in a typical year in the 2010s in Canada. It was estimated that VCPs accounted for more than 310 kilotonnes of VOC emissions in Canada, which is in good agreement with emission reports published by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). We speciated the VCP emission inventory of interest using CARB chemical profiles, which paved the way for further investigations about air pollution implications associated with the VCPs. We utilized spatial surrogates from regional demographics and employment statistics to downscale national VCP emissions to six major Canadian urban areas, including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, and Edmonton. OH reactivities and SOA formation potentials due to VCP emissions were estimated for each region mentioned above. Indoor emissions of cleaners and coatings mainly drove the VCP OH reactivities spanning from slightly below one s^-1 for Calgary to more than three s^-1 for Vancouver. SOA potentials were estimated to be mainly driven by outdoor emission of the same sources and ranged from about 4 μg/m³/[local CO ppm] for Calgary to about 13 μg/m³/[local CO ppm] for Ottawa. Moreover, experimental strategies to verify these implications during future studies were discussed.