SPECIATE

Description

SPECIATE is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) database of organic gas and particulate matter (PM) speciation profiles of air pollution sources, which provide the chemical composition of emissions from sources as a percentage of the total weight of PM or organic gas. Organic gas profiles may represent total organic gases (TOG), volatile organic compounds (VOC) or a variation. PM speciation profiles include data for PM of various size classes, such as PM2.5, which represents the mass of particles less than

or equal to 2.5 microns in diameter. In addition to PM and organic gas profiles, SPECIATE contains other profiles such as for nitrogen oxides, mercury and semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOC).

The resource includes an online browser which allows users to view detailed information about the emissions profile in tabular form or bar and pie charts, as well as downloadable databases.

Questions this resource can help answer

EPA uses SPECIATE profiles for development of air quality modeling emissions inputs, and to develop the National Emissions Inventory.
SPECIATE can also estimate hazardous air pollutant (HAP), or air toxics, emissions from total PM or organic gas emissions.
SPECIATE can be used to verify profiles derived from ambient measurements using multivariate receptor models such as factor analysis or positive matrix factorization.

How do I use this resource?

SPECIATE profiles can be downloaded in entirety as compressed (.zip) MS Access databases using the "Download" tab. Speciate includes over 6,000 profiles of source pollutants including the fraction (weight) of each species within the total weight of gases or particulate matter.

You can also browse the database online using the "Browser" tab. The browser allows you to see basic information such as profile name, pollutant type, region, chemical species and weight percent, or more detailed chemical properties. The browser also includes several visualizations including bar charts and pie charts displaying the weights of different chemical species.

You can search for specific chemical species and export results as .csv files.

Pro tips

There are a few helpful videos to walk users through how to make selections within the database browser tool. Links to those are at the bottom of the browser window.

Resource information

Resource owner

Format

Website

Backup URL

Update Frequency

Irregularly

Geographic Coverage

United States

Technical specifications

Methodology

Speciation data are developed through source testing by laboratories and research institutes and are often published in journal articles. Each profile in SPECIATE is supplemented by metadata to document the source of data.

Sectors

Other Specifications

SPECIATE profiles are downloadable as MS Access databases and thus require MS Access to use.

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