UNITED STATES PCB EMISSIONS INVENTORY

Summary | TRI | NRC | Transformer Database | Fish Advisories | STORET | IADN/RAPIDS | PCS

NRC Summary Data

It is required under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act that the National Response Center (NRC) be notified of all releases of hazardous substances (including PCBs) that exceed their reportable quantities. Transportation accidents and releases of hazardous materials must also be reported [NRC, 2002]. The NRC maintains a public-access database that can be queried for listings of incidents in the U.S. http://www.nrc.uscg.mil/foia.html

From 1990 through February 24, 2002, over 1000 PCB releases were reported in the Great Lakes states. Often, releases were reported as "unknown amount" released. The reported incidents typically were from accidents or illicit activities involving transformers or capacitors, such as a capacitor leaking due to an electrical failure, vandalism of transformers, transformer fires, and illegal dumping. The majority of releases were reported as contained or remediated. However, some releases, typically to water, were not contained or remediated. In addition, of the contained releases, estimates of volatilization or fate of the contained material were not available in the NRC database.

The NRC database estimates revealed that from 1990 through February 2002, 345,477.8 pounds of PCBs were released to land sources and 1,059,650 pounds were released to water. The category "Land" was mainly soil, but also included gravel, concrete, steel, wood flooring, and asphalt. The "Water" category included storm sewers, storm culverts, creeks, and lakes. Estimates of PCB releases to air were rarely reported, with only 3.34 pounds quantified [NRC, 2002].

NRC Summary Data Incident Reports

Using the Query function, and searching by Great Lakes States for PCBs, a listing of the incidents reported in the Basin dating back to 1990 was obtained. Below is a state by state summary of each release report.

Illinois

From 1990 through 2001, 148 PCB releases were reported in Illinois. These incidents typically were from accidents, such as a capacitor leaking due to an electrical failure. In fact, a majority of the incidents were accidents involving leaking transformers and/or capacitors. Data from 35 releases over the past five years, 1996 to the present, is summarized below. (COMED - Equipment Failure, typically capacitor rupture, transformer leak, spills while draining transformer, drum crushed - 25 gals - similar w/IL Power Co. Lots of capacitor leaks due to electrical failure). Dates Accessed: 12/31/01 and 1/3/02.

Listing by State (.pdf file)

NRC Summary Table for the Great Lakes

Queried from the online NRC database, data for the Great Lakes States from releases occurring from 1990 through February 2002 are summarized in the table below. Data was reported in gallons, which is also converted to pounds for consistency of units with the other databases used to derive the emissions inventory.