gabrielle soucy

MScA candidate
(Chemical Engineering Department - cole Polytechnique de Montral)
gabrielle.soucy@polymtl.ca

Expertise:

• Industrial food production (Freeze drying, spray drying, agglomeration)
  

• Change management

Start: September 2006
Director: Louise Deschênes
Co-director: Olivier Jolliet

Research project:

Improving the evaluation of potential health impacts of priority multi-compound emissions in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence region

Project summary:

Introduction

In order to support policy decisions and to set priorities in source reduction, there is a need for integration between emissions, environmental concentrations, and exposure and effect data.

The Great Lakes Regional Toxic Air Emissions Inventory (the Inventory) has more than 15 years of history [1-3] and aims to quantify the emissions to address regional atmospheric deposition and to support emission reduction strategies through modeling efforts, multi-media risk assessment and the design of monitoring programs in the Great Lakes region.

Extracting yearly trends and identifying which chemicals sources affect human health the most from over 250,000,000 pollutant-source-county combinations are some of the challenges when reporting on the Inventory. Toxic Equivalent Factors (TEF) were used in previous efforts to weigh PAH emissions. TEF are a measure of the dose-response only [4], but do not take the fate of the chemicals in the environment nor the human exposure into consideration. Multimedia and multi-pathways models evaluate the fate, exposure and effect of pollutants emitted into the environment; hence they are a suitable complement to the dose-response information. This paper aims to extend the concept of TEF to include the source to intake relationship of toxic emissions. An adapted version of a multi-pathway multimedia model to the Great Lakes region is used to weigh emissions consistently taking into account both toxicity and exposure. An example with 16-PAH is given and demonstrates the utility of this tool in the policy and decision making process.

Materials and methods

First, the European multimedia multi-pathway model IMPACT2002 [5-7] is first adapted the Great Lakes region and then evaluated against monitored data to validate model algorithms and the parameterization. Finally, the validated model is used in an application with 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH-16), where the intake fraction (iF) concept [8] is combined with the relative toxicity of substances, TEF [4] to yield the development of Emission Equivalent Factors (EEF) as per the equation below:

Model parameterisation

The considered region is the Great Lakes and St-Lawrence River basin (GL). From a modeling perspective the GL region is considered to be nested within the North America (NA), defined here as the region including Canada and the United States. Regional parameters for both regions reflect fate parameters such as the geographical dimension of the different compartments, advection rates, rainfall rate, etc and exposure parameters such as the population and the agricultural production of a region. Data where obtained by publicly available national and international statistics such as Environment Canada, USDA, USGS, etc.

Evaluation procedure for GL adapted model

Benzo[a]pyrene is chosen to evaluate the model. The results of the adapted GL model are compared with monitored data from the environment and food and against the prediction of two other multi-pathway multimedia models (USEtox and CalTOX), which are adapted to the GL region with the same parameterization data.

Application to the evaluation and prioritisation of PAH emissions

Reported emissions from the Great-Lakes St-Lawrence region are used as an input to the model to generate intermediary results such as concentration in environmental media, in exposed produce and number of cases, i.e. the probability to develop an illness.

Results and discussion

Evaluation of adapted model

The calculated concentrations in environment and food are close to the monitored range apart for chemical concentrations predicted in soil, underestimated by two orders of magnitude. Similar trends are observed when comparing the results with the outcomes of the USEtox and the CalTOX models. Being the degradation in soil by far the dominant loss rate, a sensitivity analysis reveals that the half-life of Benzo[a]pyrene might be greatly underestimated, or monitored soil concentration cannot be considered being representative of a background contamination level as typically assumed in multimedia models.

PAH emissions evaluation

Figure 1 show the relationship between intermediate results along the cause-effect relationship from emission to damages of PAH emissions. One observes that 4 substances (Benzo[a]pyrene, Benzo[a]anthracene, Dibenz[a,h]anthracene and Chrysene) make up 3% of the PAH-16 emissions (kg/h) correspond to 53% of the PAH-16 human intake (kg/hr), which account for 99% impact on human health (DALY/hr) due to PAH-16 emissions in the Great Lakes region.

Figure 1 : Impact of PAH-16 emissions.

The intermediate results are obtained by multiplying chemical emission by the following parameters: 1) the substance’s intake fraction (iF), in kg_ingested / kg_emitted, which is a substance and region specific constant, independent of the level of emissions, and 2) the substances’ TEF which is also a chemical specific multiplicative factor. Since both the iF and toxicity of a substance are constants for a given region, the proposition is to calculate a multiplicative factor, or Emission Equivalent Factor (EEF), of a substance by combining the TEF of a substance with the BaP normalised iF. An EEF is a multiplicative factor that relates an emission directly to its toxicity on human health. A regional set of EEF can be applied to weight emissions in an inventory and help set priorities in pollution control.
In a case study on St-Lawrence County, NY, the industrial sources responsible for less than 3% mass of total PAH emissions but 70% of the impacts on human health from PAH are identified by applying EEF to the regional emissions inventory.
EEF reflect the regional character of fate and exposure by integrating the iF.

Conclusions

This paper demonstrates that it is essential to account for both toxic potential and environmental fate and exposure (i.e. intake fraction) to properly weight PAH emissions. Analysing emissions inventories in terms of potential health impact (rather than mass or toxicity alone) provides a new perspective in decision making processes. An EEF weighed emissions inventory can be useful in ecosystem management frameworks and policy making processes to identify key emissions, track yearly changes, set reduction goals, or determine emission limits. This method could potentially be applied to any set of chemicals

References

[1] The Great Lakes Toxic Substances Control Agreement(1986).
[2] Annex 15 of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement(1987).
[3] Great Waters section of the Clean Air Act Amendments(1990).
[4] Nisbet, I. C. T. & LaGoy, P. K. 1992. Toxic equivalency factors (TEFs) for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 16(3): 290-300.
[5] Pennington, D. W., Margni, M., Ammann, C. & Jolliet, O. 2005. Multimedia fate and human intake modeling: Spatial versus nonspatial insights for chemical emissions in Western Europe. Environmental Science and Technology 39(4): 1119-1128.
[6] Pennington, D. W., Margni, M., Payet, J. & Jolliet, O. 2006. Risk and Regulatory Hazard-Based Toxicological Effect Indicators in Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA). Human and Ecological Risk Assessment 12(3): 450-475.
[7] Rochat, D., Margni, M. & Jolliet, O. 2006. Continent-specific intake fractions and characterization factors for toxic emissions: Does it make a difference? International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 11(Sp. Iss. 1): 55-63.
[8] Bennett, D. H., McKone, T. E., Evans, J. S., Nazaroff, W. W., Margni, M. D., Jolliet, O. & Smith, K. R. 2002. Defining intake fraction. Environmental Science and Technology 36(9): 206A-211A.

 

Publications/presentations:

Soucy, G., Margni, M., Dettling, J., Jolliet, O. & Deschênes, L. (2008, 27-28 octobre). Les EEF, un outil d’aide à la décision développé par l’évaluation des impacts potentiels sur la santé humaine dus à l’émission de substances dans la région des Grands Lacs et du bassin du St-Laurent. Poster: Contest "La recherche en environnement et son apport à la société" dans le cadre du Colloque international sur la responsabilité d'entreprise et l'environnement (2e place), Centre de recherche en droit public de l'Université de Montréal, Montréal, Qc.

Soucy, G., Margni, M., Dettling, J., Jolliet, O. & Deschênes, L. (2008, 29 mai). Évaluation des impacts potentiels sur la santé humaine dus à l’émission de plusieurs substances dans la région des Grands Lacs et du bassin du St-Laurent. Poster: Journée de la recherche de l'École Polytechnique, Montréal, Qc.

Soucy, G., Dettling, J., Jolliet, O., Margni, M. & Deschênes, L. (2008, 19-23 mai). Evaluating the potential health impacts of multi-compound emissions within the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence region. Presentation: IAGLR's 51st Annual Conference on Great Lakes Research, Trent, ON.

Soucy, G., Jolliet, O., Dettling, J., Margni, M., Humbert, S., Manneh, R. & Deschênes, L. (2007, 12-13 décembre). Modeling fate and effects of priority chemicals within the Great Lakes - St. Lawrence region. Presentation: Great Lakes Binational Toxics Strategy (GLBTS) stakeholder forum, Chicago, IL.

Jolliet, O., Soucy, G., Wenger, Y., Deschênes, L., Dettling, J., Humbert, S. & Margni, M. (2007, 9-13 décembre). Use of Multi-pathways Intake Fraction and blood half-live to determine adequate Toxic Equivalency Factors (TEF) to weight emissions and blood concentrations. Poster: SRA 2007, San Antonio, TX.

Soucy, G., Jolliet, O., Dettling, J., Margni, M., Humbert, S., Manneh, R., Wenger, Y. & Deschênes, L. (2007, 11-15 novembre). Use of intake fractions and blood half-lives in combination with Toxic Equivalency Factors (TEFs) to evaluate multi-compound emissions and blood concentrations. Presentation: SETAC North America 28th Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, WI.

Soucy, G., Jolliet, O., Dettling, J., Margni, M., Humbert, S., Manneh, R., Shaked, S. & Deschênes, L. (2007, 22-23 octobre). Accounting for both toxicity and exposure in characterizing and comparing PAH emissions: Application to the North American Great Lakes region. Presentation: Cycle2007: 3rd Canadian Forum on the Life Cycle Management of Products and Services, Montreal, Qc.

Soucy, G., Dettling, J., Wannaz, C., Shaked, S., Margni, M., Humbert, S., Jolliet, O. & Deschênes, L. (2007, 14-18 octobre). Modeling fate and effects of priority chemicals within the Great Lakes - St. Lawrence region. Presentation: 17th Annual Conference of the International Society of Exposure Analysis (ISEA), Durham, NC.

Soucy, G., Dettling, J., Jolliet, O., Wannaz, C., Shaked, S., Margni, M., Humbert, S. & Deschênes, L. (2007, 28 mai - 1er juin). Modeling fate and effects of priority chemicals within the Great Lakes - St. Lawrence region. Presentation: IAGLR's 50th Annual Conference on Great Lakes Research, University Park, PA.

Soucy, G., Humbert, S., Margni, M., Dettling, J., Jolliet, O. & Deschênes, L. (2007, 20-24 mai). Multiscale multimedia model evaluation for priority chemicals in the Great Lakes region. Poster: SETAC Europe 17th Annual Meeting, Porto, Portugal.

Dudal, Y., Soucy, G., Samson, R. & Deschênes, L. (2000, octobre). Time and Spatial Distribution of Biodegradation Activity and Contaminant Within a Saturated Sand Column. Presentation: 50th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, Montreal, Qc.

Soucy, G., Munizza, G., Fernandez, G. & Ariosti, A. (2000). Development of the methodology of bisphenol-A specific migration from varnishes for tinplate, Terceras jornadas de desarrollo e innovacion (pp. 60-61). Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Industrial.

Soucy, G., Munizza, G., Fernández, G. & Ariosti, A. (2000, mars). Development of the methodology of bisphenol-A specific migration from varnishes for tinplate. Presentation: II Congreso Internacional de Envases de Alimentos RISEA, Mexico.

Career path:

Education
École Polytechnique de Montreal (2000)
Bachelor in chemical engineering
Specialization: processes and biotechnologies

Employment

• Kraft Foods – England (2000 – 2005)
  
• R&D engineer (2 yrs, 2000-2002)
  
• Process development engineer (1 yr, 2002-2003)
  
• Shift manager (1 yr, 2003-2004)
  
• Change facilitator (1 yr, 2004-2005)

Professional internships
St-Jean Photochemical Inc. – St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC (1998)
Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Industrial – Buenos Aires, Argentine (1999)
CIRAIG – Montréal, QC (2006)
Great Lakes Commission – Ann Arbor, MI, USA (2007)