A regionally segmented national scale multimedia contaminant fate model for Canada with GIS data input and display

Abstract

Regional scale mass balance models are valuable tools for describing the fate of chemicals in areas with defined and fairly homogeneous environmental characteristics and chemical use patterns. These models often show that contaminant inflows from outside the region of interest are significant compared with local emissions. This is most likely for persistent chemicals and those that are efficiently transported in air or water. As a result regional levels of environmental contamination are controlled by external factors and meaningful evaluation requires assessment of contaminant fate in neighboring regions. A linked set of regional models thus has the potential to describe quantitatively the impact of chemical emissions over a wider geographic scale with significant spatial differences in environmental characteristics and chemical use patterns. We describe here a national scale contaminant fate model for Canada based on the existing 24-region ChemCAN model. The ecological regions, which were previously treated individually, are linked with flows of air and water deduced from GIS analysis to provide a comprehensive description of contaminant fate over the entire country, including long-range transport between regions. The model is applied to describe the national-scale fate of three chemicals in Canada, benzene, trichloroethene, and diethylhexyl phthalate, exploiting GIS analysis for interpretation and presentation of model results. Agreement between predicted multimedia environmental concentrations and measured values is satisfactory for all three chemicals. In total this work represents an initial attempt to address the different processes of both linking a regional model and using GIS as a tool for data analysis and management.