CANADIAN PCB EMISSIONS INVENTORY

Sediment | PCBs in Use and in Storage | Fish Advisories | Accidental Spills and Releases | Surface Water | Air

PCBs in Use and in Storage (page 1 of 3)

1. National Inventory

There is a national inventory of PCBs in use and PCB wastes in storage in Canada, which is prepared for the Canadian Council of Ministers for the Environment, a federal-provincial forum for environmental issues. The database is to be prepared annually, but is currently only publicly available up to 1996 because of technical issues. Later information is in the database but not published. An access to information request was made for more recent inventory data, and the latest available draft information, for PCBs as of December 2001, is listed below.

Data from the 2001 Inventory:

• The report contains the status of the PCB inventory as of Dec. 31, 2001, including information on the amounts of PCBs destroyed in Canada since 1988.

• Both federal and provincial governments provide information for the national database.

Environment Canada supplies data on:

• in-use PCB-containing equipment

• federally regulated PCB wastes

• PCB wastes in P.E.I., Saskatchewan, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories

  Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia supply data on:

• PCBs in storage in their respective jurisdictions

Data sources for the national inventory information:

• PCBs in storage: Federal and provincial PCB waste storage regulations require PCB owners to report the amounts of PCB wastes they have in storage.

• PCBs in use in electrical equipment: voluntary reporting by PCB owners and inspections of PCB equipment for compliance with federal regulations.

• Information on amounts of PCBs destroyed is from published reports on PCB destruction projects in Canada and from the owners and operators of commercial PCB treatment and destruction systems.

The 2001 report contains data for five categories of in-use PCBs:

• in-use askarel
• waste askarel
• in-use PCB-contaminated mineral oil
• waste PCB-contaminated mineral oil
• other PCB wastes

Askarel is the term used to describe a broad category of insulating liquids used in capacitors and transformers that contain between 40 and 80% PCBs. The two types of askarels represent high concentration PCB liquids. The two mineral oil categories represent low concentration PCB liquids. Generally, PCB contamination in mineral oil is less than 1000 ppm. The "other PCB wastes" category includes drained PCB transformers, capacitors contaminated with residual PCBs, fluorescent lamp ballasts containing PCB capacitors, and PCB-contaminated soils and other solids such as wood and absorbents. Most of the askarel and mineral oil categories are found in electrical equipment, but liquid PCB wastes can also be stored in drums or other containers.

Both gross and net weights are used in reporting data. Net weight is the weight of the askarel or mineral oil itself, while gross weight is the total weight of the liquid and the electrical equipment in which it is contained. Wastes such as soil are reported only as gross weights. Both types of weight are included in order to facilitate PCB management.

NOTE: Canadian PCB measurements are in tonnes, which is a metric ton. One tonne is 2204.622 pounds.

PCBs in Use (PDF file is attached for the data on the following):

• In-use Askarel and Mineral Oil Inventory (December 2001)
• Waste Askarel and Mineral Oil Inventory (December 2001)
• Other PCB Wastes (December 2001)

The Binational Toxics Strategy reports that by 2000, 70% of overall high-level PCBs in Canada had been destroyed, up from 40% in 1998; and that 25% of low-level PCBs had been destroyed, and that a large portion of the remaining low-level waste is soil from a contaminated site clean-up, stored in an engineered containment facility.

PCBs in Storage

For PCBs in storage, the principal components of the inventory are:

• National Inventory: all PCBs in Canada

• the Federal Inventory: PCBs owned or controlled by federal government departments, agencies, boards, and crown corporations.

• the Non-federal Inventory.

PDF file is attached for the data on the following:

• PCB storage sites (by province only)
• PCB storage sites (Federal)
• PCB storage sites (non-federal)

PCB Waste Destruction

National figures for PCB waste destruction for 1987 to 1996 in tonnes (figures prior to 1988 are not available) are:

These figures are from the 1996 Inventory. The 2001 Inventory does not contain information on PCB waste destruction.

One Environment Canada spokesperson noted that the data for PCBs were most accurate for in-use information and statistics on PCBs destroyed, but that there are problems with data on the steps in between - decommissioning, storage, and transportation - because of a lack of consistency in how amounts of PCBs are measured (some are by weight, some by liquid, or you could have 40 tons of steel contaminated with PCBs but not even know exactly how many PCBs were there).

PCBs in Use and Storage, page 2 >>