Highlights of the 2000 NPRI Data

The year 2000 data is the eighth annual release since the inventory's inception in 1992 and represents the second year NPRI data has been publicly released within five months of the June 1^st date of reporting. The data has not yet been analyzed in terms of trends with previous years for targeted pollutants; however, it has been reviewed for quality of reporting from requisite facilities.

Significant changes were made to the NPRI for the 2000 reporting year regarding the reporting of many substances that pose serious risks to human health or the environment in relatively low quantities. Very limited, if any, data for these substances was being reported at the original 10-tonne and 1% concentration reporting thresholds. In 1999, Environment Canada (EC) and the NPRI Multi-stakeholder Ad Hoc Work Group on Substances (WGS) examined candidate substances for addition to the NPRI at alternate reporting thresholds. Together, EC and the WGS identified the following substances as having the highest priority for addition at alternate thresholds: 17 individual polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (dioxins)/ polychlorinated dibenzofurans (furans), hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and mercury (and its compounds), previously listed but at the standard threshold.

In total for the 2000 reporting year, there are 268 substances listed in the NPRI, 55 of which have been declared toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The original 10-tonne manufacture, process or otherwise use reporting threshold applies to 248 substances; the remaining 20 substances have alternate reporting thresholds, as described above.

Units of Measure

The units of measure depend upon the substance being reported. Generally, release, disposal and recycling quantities are reported in tonnes. However, for substances with alternate reporting thresholds, these quantities are reported in kilograms or grams

A Note on the NPRI Data Files Distributed by Environment Canada

The NPRI data files for the 2000 reporting year are available in Microsoft (MS) Access and MS Excel format. Environment Canada has published the 2000 data as reported by facilities, which includes 'NULL' values. This affects how the information can be accessed and queried (for more information on this issue, see below). For previous years information, data is available in dBase format. In this file format, 'NULL' values cannot be stored and zeros were used as place holders.

More Information on 'NULL' values in the NPRI
With the addition of micro-pollutants (e.g. PAHs, Dioxins and Furans) for the 2000 reporting year the use of zero-nulls had to be discontinued as these pollutants could have valid 'NULL' and zero entries for the same 'Basis of Estimation' code.

Due to the current structure of the database, queries using Microsoft Access will work correctly only if you are using aggregate functions (e.g. Sum, , Count). If you attempt to perform an arithmetic operation (add, subtract, multiply, or divide) you will receive 'NULL' as the answer if any of the fields in your query contains a 'NULL' (highly probable). When using MS Access and attempting to perform an arithmetic operation on the NPRI data, you are required to use the undocumented NZ function (it converts a NULL to a zero) to achieve the correct result to your query. (e.g. NZ ([AIRSTA_V]) + NZ ([AIRSTO_V]), notice how each field is encapsulated by NZ. This can lead to very long queries and also severely limits the utility of the built-in query builder.)

Excel worksheets are recommended since Excel ignores 'NULL' valued entries