Potential Ambient Standards for Atmospheric Sulfates:An Account of a Workshop

Abstract

In June 1977, the Brookhaven National Laboratory Office of Environmental Policy sponsored a workshop to help frame estimates of air quality standards for sulfates and to gauge effects of these potential standards on the present and future national energy system. Workshop participants developed a list of standards with estimates of the time at which each might be promulgated. Within 1 to 2 years, only EPA National Ambient Air Quality Standards based on total water-soluble sulfates seem likely. Under the most stringent standard considered likely, constraints on sulfur emissions could have extensive effects on the entire energy system and would require substantial efforts to elucidate meteorological, economic, and legal relationships and to develop workable control strategies that account for long-range transport of sulfates. Under the least stringent standards considered feasible, constraints on sulfur emissions could be minimal and confined to a small area of the northeast. In either case, long-range formation and transport of sulfates over distances of hundreds of kilometers makes the problem of equity of sulfate control strategies particularly acute.