INTERNATIONAL AIR QUALITY ADVISORY BOARD

Donald McKay, Canadian CoChair, IAQAB, and Atmospheric Environment Service of Environment Canada

Good morning Commissioners and invited guests. It is a privilege on behalf of the International Air Quality Advisory Board to be here this morning to address you on what we are all about.

I would like to cover five areas this morning in this presentation:

• who we are
• a little bit of what is in our 23^rd progress report that was submitted to the Commissioners
• some work that we've done and commented on in the '95-97 Priorities Report
• a joint workshop that was done with the WQB and us. What are some of the recommendations and what are some of the findings from that workshop that was held this past May
• what does the future hold for the Air Quality Board in the IJC

We were established in 1966. The purpose of our Board was to advise on transboundary air issues. We are a little bit different than most boards you've heard this morning which deal with a specific area of the Great Lakes. We have to cover the total boundary between the U.S. and Canada, not just along the 49^th parallel, but also that includes the Alaska/Yukon border as well. So we deal with a number of states and provinces that will have impact. Air doesn't recognize borders and therefore it behooves both countries to look at this in a binational perspective.

We are made up of five U.S. representatives and five Canadian representatives. As mentioned before, for the other Boards, we do this on a voluntary basis. We have other jobs and other capacities but we certainly put a high priority and spend a lot of time and effort in this area. We're made up of federal, state and provincial, and academic type of people.

The next slide and I won't go through all the names, but you will see the representatives and what their affiliations are. And I wish to take this opportunity to introduce John McDonald from the IJC Windsor Office who provides us with secretarial support and also a lot of guidance.

How do we report to the Commissioners and to the public in general? We submit regular written reports to the Commission. We convene workshops and seminars on particular topics and we prepare special issue reports on the various air issues that we need to deal with. So that's a little bit about us and how we operate.

I will now talk about the 23^rd progress report that was submitted to the IJC in June. Some of the topics that we are dealing with in that particular report were acidifying emissions, ozone and particulate matter, greenhouse gases and climate change, and the possibility of a bilateral air management framework. I would like to say a few words on each of these various areas:

• Acidifying emissions. A lot of people think the acid rain issue is a dead issue. We've met our commitments. There has been emission reductions. We don't need to worry anymore, but that's far from the truth. I will admit that we have made, and the Parties have made, large strides in the past and continue to make strides on this particular issue, but it's not solved. There is still work to be done. There are still possible controls that need to be taken to drastically reduce these acidifying emissions below critical loads, and in a number of areas, both in the U.S. and Canada, this has not yet been completed.
• Secondly, there needs to be work done because we are finding that what we anticipated to be the recovery rate, given the controls and reductions in sulphurs, is not happening and there is other mechanisms going on, such as nitrification that we have to look at and address because the recovery rate in our lakes are not happening as anticipated. There is work there that still needs to be addressed.
• With regard to ozone and particulate matter, NO_x emissions is one of the precursors for the development of ozone. It is certainly detrimental to humans and to the environment, and it contributes to not only the development of ozone, but acid deposition, eutrophication and visibility degradation. Why the concern with NO_x emissions, for example? This is a pie chart taken from the U.S. NO_x emissions for 1992 which gives an indication of where the primary sources for NO_x is coming from. You'll see from the graph that the two major areas for NO_x emissions is highway vehicles, the cars and trucks we drive every day, and electric utilities. So, in our report, it was emphasized that we need to continue and strive toward reducing these emissions from automobiles and also remove them from the electrical energy generation plants, particularly coal-fired plants that are still, and will continue to be used.
• The next area is the ozone issue. I talk here about the tropospheric or ground-level ozone, not about the stratospheric ozone or UV reductions in this instance. It also has been demonstrated in the medical literature, that there is immediate health effects seen during ozone incidents. Those health effects are still being seen at the former standards that the Parties had in place. John, if you could just show a couple of examples.

This is an example of a study that was done in Ontario, in collaboration with the medical profession and atmospheric scientists and what this shows is a hospital's emissions versus the level of ozone, so if you look along the x-axis you will look at the maximum one-hour ozone level and it says lag by one-day. So what we are looking at here is that if you had an episode today, what would be the hospital emissions tomorrow?

Just to set the scene here is the present Canadian guidelines are 82 ppb. So if you could see where that value is, there certainly is a number of hospital emissions following that episode. The main point I want to show you is if you look to what happens below that recommendation or that level. Below that level, there is still a large number of hospital emissions. The point I want to make here is that what this demonstrates is that there is no threshold level. There is no level at which you can see that no one will be affected by this ozone incident. Therefore we have to realize that in our setting of standards that there is not going to be a level that says there will be no effects. That doesn't say, well good, well we'll just go down to the lowest level, we can't do that because there are background levels. Not all of the precursors or the development of ozone are caused by anthropogenics, therefore we will not necessarily be able to reduce it down to where there would be no effects on humans, but what we have to realize that we want to try to minimize that effect and work towards that minimization.

Another example, I want to show from a Canadian perspective. This is showing the number of days per year, based on an average from '87 to '91 where, in specific cities, in which the standard level of 82 ppb, the various cities in which the number of days in which this level was exceeded. You say see there is a large concentration along the Great Lakes, and also there are hot spots on the west coast, and certainly into the Maritimes as well. This indicates the necessity to work toward setting standards and trying to understand those standards.

So we go back to the other slide, John. The other interest we have and recommend to the Board is that we help support the new U.S. standards that is being developed. They are better than what they were. It has been 20 years since the standards have been changed and we encourage the U.S. in setting these standard, and encourage Canada to follow suit. And Canada is certainly looking at new guidelines to that. We need to look at VOCs and NO_x controls required in order to reach those standards and to reduce the development of ozone.

On particulate matter, health studies have demonstrated, particularly particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5), and 2.5 is the size of the particles that are there, that we inhale. PM 2.5 has been shown that these particles penetrate very deeply into the lung, and cause ill effects in both our children and in elderly, and can have detrimental effects on healthy adults as well. Ozone we may not be able to see totally, but we certainly can see the effects of particulate matter when we look at the haze and urban smog in our cities.

• I want to emphasize with this third bullet, is the linkage. We talk about acid rain and sulphur but there is a linkage here when we talk about a particulate matter or acidifying emissions, there are links between all these various issues that we have. We cannot look at just one in isolation and hope to come to a solution and solve the problem, because there is so much linkages. We have to look at it in totality and hope that if we do look at individuals and bring in certain controls, that we'll also have a positive effect in some of the other issues we have to deal with.
• Again, the U.S. have put out new standards on particulate matter and Canada is looking again to develop new guidelines for this. It is going to take time. It is the new 'emerging issue,' although it has been around for a long time. But these are new standards and are going to take time for organizations, industry and states/governments to put in the correct regulations. It needs to be based on sound science which does take time to develop and which we are all trying to work toward to provide.
• In the report we also talked about CO₂ controls and greenhouse gases. Although the climate change issue is a global issue. It does have ramifications on the transboundary perspective and effects both countries. We felt it important to comment and be cognizant of this issue, even though it is more global, it has transboundary and regional effects. Any methodologies to reduce these greenhouse gases in the transboundary context will certainly help the global issue as well.

What are some of the things that the progress report has recommended?:

• the monitoring that is going on between the various parties. It seems to be an area which, when reductions are at hand, the Parties consider reducing the monitoring. We are concerned and emphasized the importance of continuing our monitoring programs. How else will we know how well we are doing if we are not monitoring the situation? So even though we make think an issue is solved, we need to continue monitoring efforts to make sure we are. Realizing the expense to maintain monitoring efforts is not something simple, it is not just putting a thermometer outside to measure temperature or humidity, most of the monitoring efforts we need to do, particularly in the air quality and water areas is very expensive and time consuming, not only for the instrumentation but for the analysis. So we need to do it smartly, we need to look at how we can do it in the most efficient and effective way, how can we work with partners, how can we collaborate in order to continue our monitoring efforts in these times of reducing resources. So we made a statement that we need to indicate the importance of monitoring programs.

  As I mentioned, air sees no boundary. It doesn't come up from the south or down from the north and stop at the boundary. It's a continuum. If we are going to set standards for various air quality, we need to emphasize to the Parties that we need to harmonize our standards. We may not be able to come to agreement on the exact same number but we need to understand the rationale behind our standard or guidelines setting and what that means in a binational context. If I am in Windsor and hear from a U.S. radio station that the standards are being exceeded or vice versa from a Canadian source, the individual will be able to understand what these standards mean from both countries.
  

• We need to do bilateral research. For our case, air quality research. Our research and management efforts has to be coordinated, so we are not working at cross-purposes, that we are working together toward one commonality, that is to be able to breathe pure air in both countries.

Where can you read more about our progress report? It is in hard copy, but in this era of technology, we do now have it on a web site, please have a look at it for more details about what our report entails.

I would like to talk about the 1995-97 Priorities Report. For the Air Quality Board, our priorities were to identify the depositions of persistent toxic substances from internal and external sources. Incineration is one of the major contributors to these PTSs in Great Lakes region. We wanted to assess the incineration situation and review activities of both Canada and the U.S. in the long-range transport of atmospheric pollutants.

You can't look at the Great Lakes in isolation. This slide shows you how long it would take for a certain number of airborne pollutants to be transported into the Great Lakes watershed. As you can see within five days, you are taking up most of Canada and U.S. particularly the eastern portions to have contaminants come from these various regions what you may think have no effect on the Great Lakes to reach the Great Lakes and contribute to our problem. From the air point of view, you have to look at a wider area than just the Great Lakes airshed to help us understand and to help us control the pollutants coming into the Great Lakes.

In the past, we always looked at the Great Lakes and the basin as a receptor, not a source. But some of the work that is being done is the last few years has demonstrated, with measurements from the Integrated Acid Deposition Network, that the Great Lakes in some instances are becoming the source and not the receptor. The reason for that is because of programs that have been put into place, the concentration in the air has become much less than the concentration in the water in our Great Lakes, therefore, we end up having an outflux as opposed to an influx. That is a point that has not been discussed very much in the past and something that we may have to look at and try to resolve in the future.

We have looked at the incineration situation in the Great Lakes region and some of the recommendations we want to look at is that incineration does not become a panacea for reduction and recycling. We want to make sure that any incineration that is done is in compliance with U.S. EPA and MOEE requirements. And that we continue to look at technological advances in order to improve anything going out of those stacks. We also want to make sure that jurisdictions achieve net reductions in what is happening. We want to look at those net reductions in total by the incineration stream.

The workshop that was held jointly in May of 1997, with the WQB and the IAQAB. This was an excellent opportunity to bring together the water and the air to establish a total picture of what is happening in the region. I think this workshop met that criteria in that there was very good communication and dialogue amongst scientists and policy, both from the water and from the air communities. We need to continue that communication because this cannot be looked at as individual problems, but in totality. There is a need for a continuous forum for exchange of information and resolution of scientific issues, and to get cross-communication from people of diversified disciplines. We stress the need for the Commission to promote the development of this forum and the need to have an application of beyond just compliance tool. We need to look at tools to help develop pollution prevention, environmental auditing and waste minimization.

Some of the outputs from the workshop:

• The need to look at the physical/chemical properties, air and water data. The lack of information in order to put in models or in order to understand what is going on is emission inventory. Although emission inventories are something that we all strive to obtain, it is something that is difficult, but it is the fundamental thing that we need to drive any of the management tools or research modelling work in a timely manner.
• We stress the importance of modelling the total system, both the air, water modelling and mass balance approach. We need to get the people and the information together to get a total picture of what has happened.
• We need to upgrade measurements for the PTSs in all media -- air and water.
• We need a better quantification of our PTSs reduction that has been done.

A couple of examples of work where we are making progress:

• From the Accelerated Reduction Elimination Toxics [ARET] results for PTSs using a base year 1988, you can see where there has been reductions both end reductions to the emissions in 1993, 1995 and projected for the year 2000. This is just on a Canadian program.
• To show you similar, using dioxin releases in the U.S., what they were in 1990, and what we now see in 1996.

So we have a ways to go and work to do but we are making progress. From the research perspective from the binational strategies for research, what we felt needs to be done. We need to look at the reaction rates and the concentrations. This came out of the joint workshop of the WQB/IAQABs. We need to understand what are these reaction rates and concentrations. We need to understand the processes in which we have wet and dry deposition, how are they taking, how they established out of the atmosphere, and how are they deposited. We need to understand the meteorological drivers and how these chemicals are moved around into the atmosphere. When we get better understanding of these processes, along with the emissions information, we then need to improve our modelling studies to understand how they are transported. What is the long-range transport mechanisms and how do they reach the Great Lakes basin?

I throw this slide up just to give you a cartoon about what we're talking about here. If you look at the lower corner, where you talk about emissions, they can be anthropogenic or they can be natural, they are released into the atmosphere and then a number of things can happen in the atmosphere. They can be moved around and take the same type of constituents that they were before when they were released. They can be transformed. This is an area where we have to pay special attention to because you may have a chemical going into the atmosphere that may be benign in itself, but when it mixes with something else in the atmosphere, its toxicity can increase substantially. This is something we need to be concerned and worried about.

We need to understand how these emissions are partitioned. Do they remain in the particulate form? Do they transform into gases as a function of temperature? What is the ratio of that? . . . which is going to change as they move probably from one latitude to the other. We need to understand what the air concentrations are, and what those air concentrations mean. And we also need to understand this thing called the grasshopper effect. What that is, is that we may think by putting in controls in the past, that we have eliminated the problem, but because a lot of these chemicals, particularly pesticides, DDT, which have been banned in the U.S. and Canada, but they have a long persistence rate in the soil. Due to tillage practices, they are then brought to the surface again, lifted by the wind, and moved northward only to be deposited and then lifted again, and moved on further north. So some things we thought we shouldn't be seeing anymore, we are finding; for example, in the Arctic, where DDT was never used. And if it has been banned where is it coming from? We have to better understand this grasshopper effect and be able to incorporate into our models in order to predict where these chemicals are going to end up and what effect they will have when they end up in a certain location.

We also need to understand things about clouds. The last part of what happens when these gases, or particulates end up in clouds and interact with the water in the atmosphere and then finally, what is happening at the surface. How are they deposited, whether wet or dry. By understanding those, we can then get a better handle on providing information to the effects people on saying what effects it will be on your forestry, vegetation, lakes, fish. That gives an indication why the importance of the research.

Future activities for 1997 - 1999. Within the Great Lakes, we want to continue and further investigate the source receptor relationships. Where are these pollutants being emitted? Where are they being received? What happens if we have emission reductions? What happens if we have emissions trading? People talking about emissions trading, and I think the key there is not necessarily against emissions trading, but if we're going to look at how and what effects will that emissions trading have on a particular area. You may say that if there are no effects if there is emissions trading down in Florida, but maybe if a plant in the Ohio valley can let out more pollutants because they've had emissions trading with a less-emission producing plant in Florida, it may have more effects on the Great Lakes. And maybe overall it looks like there's no effect, there may regional effects that we have to take into concern.

The last thing we're looking at for the future is the development by the Air Quality Board, of a transboundary, regional report. In the past we talked about the various issues, whether it's ozone, particulate matter, acid rain, toxic chemicals, whatever, in isolation. One has to search for that information in a number of different reports, what the Air Quality Board is proposing and working toward to have produced by the Spring to submit to the Commissioners is a transboundary regional report which will look and describe what are the air quality issues that we want to deal with and why they are an issue. What are the Parties doing about those issues? What are our recommendations that the Parties should be doing about those issues? Using that as one document as the basis to develop an annual report card on how well the Parties are doing in dealing with air issues across the board. So it's a major endeavour, but it will be an endeavour where we will have one report that people can read and get most of the information, if not all, of what the Air Quality Board is working on.

I want to thank the Commissioners for inviting the Air Quality Board to give a presentation today. And I hope that the rest of the guests have found it informative and I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

I guess there's time for a few questions:

Q: Elaine Kennedy. Is there any connection between the Air Quality Board and the joint public advisory committee of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation [CEC]?

R: (Don McKay) Yes, there is. We strive to work in collaboration with the CEC. They are putting out some reports that we have commented on, and because a lot of the people on IJC boards are also on their boards. There is close collaboration and cooperation, not only with CEC, but U.S./Canada Air Quality Agreement people and other boards as well.

Q: Bruce Walker with STOP, a citizen's environmental group from Montreal. I want to echo your good words about the 23^rd progress report. I was reading it on the train down here from here. It is an excellent report. I encourage other people to look at it. You do a good job of taking very technical subjects and making it understandable to a wider range of readers and users. Thank you.

I am glad you mentioned the acid rain issues as coming back. I take this opportunity to mention that a month ago, a significant report on acid rain in Canada was released by the Acidifying Emissions Task Group, a multistakeholder advisory committee, of which I was a member. This report which is only a month old is already in its second printing. If people want to ask me afterwards how to get, I could tell you, it's just a phone call. The key thing it points out essentially is that the science tells us that even with full implementation of Title 4 of the U.S. Clean Air Act, there will be considerable ecological AND, for the first time, human health damage well into the next century unless we do further reduction of SO_X and NO_X emissions which leads me to my question. You just mentioned the Canada/U.S. Air Quality Accord. We all know the IJC has an important, if perhaps little understood role, on that accord. But I am curious to know what the formal role of the Air Quality Board is with regard to the Air Quality Accord, and more specifically, has the board made any recommendations regarding adding other annexes to the Air Quality Accord, specifically dealing with NO_X, ozone and particulates?

R: (McKay) The role that we have, is as I mentioned to the lady before, we have an interactive role and keep each other abreast of what we are doing. The Air Quality Board has had a role on commenting on the CEC's reports, and we encourage the U.S./Canada Air Quality Agreement people to add new annexes to the Board. I know they are doing ozone, and are looking at particulates.

Q: Mike Murray with National Wildlife Federation, Great Lake Office in Ann Arbor. I just want to second or third the importance of monitoring in these efforts. They have been mentioned both by the Boards and by the public today. A couple of problems have been noted. One is the government cutbacks on both sides in monitoring efforts; the second, the fact that among researchers, generally monitoring is not necessarily a top priority item. I think they generally have to be encouraged by governments to go that direction or be part of something like the Lake Michigan Mass Balance Study to really do that, so I think the boards at IJC have to encourage the governments to get back into more serious monitoring work for persistent toxics in the Great Lakes. And to try to help get collaborative efforts going as the Council of Great Lakes Research Manager mentioned. Both of those efforts are necessary. The IJC could be encouraging the governments to be putting more money into funding these projects, not just accepting as a given that funding levels are down and that you have to live with that. We don't have to. Economies are going pretty strongly. There's no reason that funding efforts in monitoring and other areas can't be beefed up.

R: (McKay) All I can do is echo your statements and agree with you totally. The IJC can encourage the government to do those things. As you say, in the monitoring, it is difficult, particularly in the research community in the universities, to maintain that, so I think it is the role of governments to look at this long-term monitoring aspect.

Q: Bill Borden from Lake Michigan Federation in Chicago. I want to congratulate the Board not only on its research but on its ability to quantify some of the progress we've made in cleaning up the air. You showed a cell a little while ago which seemed to indicate that emissions have gone down in tons. I know you said that was a Canadian report. It confused some of us, especially from southern Lake Michigan because it seemed in our area that emissions have increased. Even though fuel efficiency standards seem to have brought down the emissions, there are greater increases in vehicle miles traveled. Sprawl and those kinds of things have increased the number of vehicles and miles traveled and so forth. I wonder if you would first comment on that, and then secondly, has the board come out in favour of tightening up CAFE (Combined Automobile Fuel Efficiency) standards; those are real bones of contention now in the U.S. and I wondered if the Board has made and specific recommendations on those?

R: (McKay) I believe this is the graph you are referring to. Recent reports have shown that there has been an increase in some emissions on there, but overall there has been some drastic reductions, but I wouldn't be surprised if you saw the graph go up in the 1997 ... These are only persistent toxics, there are not NO_X. With regard to the fuel, we have not made any recommendations but we have encouraged more stringent standards that can be put in place.

Q: (Borden) Do you see the Board taking a stronger position?

R: (McKay) I can certainly see the board wanting to and it will certainly be discussed amongst the Board. I think from our demonstration, we are encouraging anything that will help us reduce emissions and improve our air quality.

Q: (Borden) I cannot speak for the entire environmental community but I can speak for Lake Michigan Federation, and I hope that you will take those very strong and very direct stances in the future.

R: (McKay) I appreciate that.

Q: Andy Gilman from Health Canada. Don, congratulations on the report. Two comments to encourage your board and also to emphasize for Commissioners. Persistent toxic substances and non-persistent airborne pollutants, you've identified as two of the major issues you are addressing. A lot of time has been spent on the persistent toxic substances from a health point of view and we know the sorts of health effects that are there. They are extremely difficult to monitor, however, because they are reportable diseases. In the case of the non-persistent airborne pollutants like particulates, sulphates, and ozone, they do lead to reportable disease that are easily captured and we know now that the sorts of levels that are occurring in Canadian, in the Windsor/Detroit area, going up to Quebec City lead to billions of dollars of respiratory health costs now, not potentially. So it is extremely important that everybody be aware that this costs billions of dollars in direct health care costs and loss of quality of life now. It's sulphates, it's ozone, and particulates. The second point is that for persistent toxic substances, we're dealing with a problem where by-and large, the sources that used to put these things into the environment are controlled, and now we are dealing with the legacy of persistent compounds in the environment. With these kinds of compounds, the sources exist now. They are controllable sources. They only exist in these concentrations because we are steadily emitting them, and one thing perhaps we could consider is adding ozone and sulphate and particulates to the virtual elimination strategy.

R: (McKay) Thank you for your comments. I can totally agree with you.

Q: Henry Regier: I would like to raise an issue with respect to the scientific aspects of your report. I have the sense that the reality that you are dealing with here is highly episodic, it's turbulent. Much of what's important is far from equilibrium. I have sensed talking to hydrological colleagues that they are increased and he's seen the hydrology of the lakes and rivers this way, ecologically we're seeing it this way, toxicologically we're seeing it this way. Even in the industrial ecology, this is becoming the dominant approach. Whereas much of the science that we are still doing presupposes steady state, quasi-equilibrium conditions. So I fancy that you have a lot to teach us on how to develop a scientific approach that's far more realistic than much of what we have been doing before. One of the recommendations that came out of the Stockholm Water Symposium this summer was that much of the work on indicators and monitoring should reorganize itself, reorient itself to deal with episodes rather than the rather unusual steady-state periods that sometimes occur. Do you concur with that?

R: (McKay) Yes, I do. If you look at the work that is done in the air, it is episodic, the ozone, for example, we try to look at what would be the situation in certain times, not as a continuance. Secondly, if you look at the standards that are being developed, that are looking towards episodic ... but you also have to be careful in the sense that you can have a long-time accumulative effects as well. Certainly, from the air side, we do look at particular instances, episodic, but we also have to look at the continuous background type of thing. Yes, looking at the episodic you can get a better handle on the impacts.

Q: Ziggy Kleinau with Great Lakes United, and also Citizens for Renewable Energy. I was listening quite intently to the presentation and in regard to the point-sources of airborne pollution, I didn't hear anything about pollution coming from nuclear reactions. Now there's about 60 reactors around the Great Lakes basin, especially on the Canadian side, the Candu reactors, there are 20 of them releasing tritium on a daily basis through air emissions that have been found in milk and crops and honey, and I am wondering if you are addressing these sources at all? Are you looking at what they are doing to the Great Lakes?

R: (McKay) We have looked at those and we will continue. I will take it back to my board members to discuss maybe we have to put a little more emphasis on that.

Q: (Kleinau) It's just addressing the fluid emissions . . .

R: (McKay) We'll take it on, to talk to the task force to see what is being done in there as well.

Q: I am Sydney Baiman from NEIS, Chicago area Nuclear Energy Information Service. It is a followup question to Ziggy. I want to say that also with the emissions from all these power plants; of course, Chicago has 13, you have inert gases of krypton 85, and xenon 133, you have carbon 14 which takes place as carbon dioxide which is killing our trees -- trees downwind from the nuclear powers plants in the Appalachians and in Germany, they are dying. This has increased since the emissions of these gases and the other cesium and strontium and all those. I also would like to talk about the NO_X and SO_X carbon emissions. When you have the radiation emissions, the combination, there has been a study done in India where there is a gas power plant and within a mile there is a research laboratory and this doctor has figured it out that when the emissions come from the research laboratory and mix with the SO_X from the gas plant, the sulphur dioxides change to sulphuric acid. What I am saying is that the radiation mixture here -- you talked about transformation and everything -- helps to transform to make everything more acid and is helping to change the Ph of the northern hemisphere. The whole point is that the base of all this pollution is radiation because it made the whole hemisphere more acid which means that all this added SO_X and NO_X is more detrimental to the earth.

R: (McKay) Thank you. I am not aware of those studies, but I'd appreciate it if you could tell me who produced those and we'll look at that. Thank you.

Chairman Legault: I would like to break in and ask the two remaining speakers to be as brief as possible. We are running almost a half-hour late with another board to hear from.

Q: My name is Sally Billups, with Michigan Environmental Council. You stressed the need for integration, bilateral efforts for modelling. There is a particularly germane issue with EPA recently proposed rule to cap and reduce emission of nitrogen dioxide in the midwestern states in dealing with the transport issue with north eastern. I know that southern Ontario is impacted by Ohio, and Michigan. I don't see Canada at the table at this point in that modelling process and was just wondering what are the next steps and what role can the board play in leveraging Canada's involvement? What can be done to bring in Canada, given the transport issue and the airshed you showed geographically, it is obviously an important component to have them there.

R: (McKay) The Board encourages interaction at the binational level of work on research. As an Environment Canada employee, I will tell you some of the things, we are doing: We have been involved in a number of exercises: the OTAG exercise. EPA is putting out what is called the Model 3 framework. Our scientists, particularly the scientists in my shop as director of Air Quality Research, are being engaged and working with the EPA modelling scientists to look at that platform, not only the U.S. models, but also to put the Canadian models on that platform, so that we can do a comparison between the various exercises to make sure that we are getting similar results. One of the things that bothered me in the past, is we spent a lot of time arguing between the two countries arguing 'my model is better than your model.' This is an opportunity, a lesson learned from the acid rain days, is that we are coming together and have collaborative input so when the policy makers sit down at the table, they don't have to worry about different data sets.

Q: (Billups) Thank you very much.

Q: Brett Hulsey, Sierra Club: We heard you talk about risk based modelling. We recently analyzed the 1995 Toxic Release Inventory data. It showed the Great Lakes is the Cancer Alley of America. We now release more OCEA cancer-causing chemicals than even Cancer Alley in Louisiana. We starting to find these cancer pockets around Kodak in Rochester. There's a cancer pocket just analyzed in southeast Michigan around automobile plants that broke in the press on Friday. We want to ask YOU to tell the EPA to do health-based standards under the Clean Air Act which they have the authority to do, to deal with these cancer pollutants that ... one in three of us will get cancer; and one of five of us will die from cancer. Especially childhood cancers, there's no other plausible source of cancer in these children than probably environmental contamination. So will you pledge to push EPA to do health-based standards?

R: (McKay) The answer to that is yes, we will. I have my colleague, my cochair, Gary Foley is with the EPA and certainly we will discuss that and push. The Great Lakes is one of our major concerns.

Chairman Legault: Thank you very much for that presentation. To conclude this part of our program this morning, we'll now hear from our Science Advisory Board. The speakers will be Theo Colborn, Michel Fournier and Tony Wagner. Michel will be giving his presentation in French, so those of you who need the interpreter gadget, can get one at the back of the room at the interpreter's booth. Because we are so far behind our scheduled time, we're not taking a coffee break and will not take a lunch break. We have about 40 people who want to put questions to the Commission, so I hope you will bear with us as we try to make up for the delays in our morning program.