Air Toxic Monitoring Network (ATMN)

Toxic air pollutants, also called Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs), are known or suspected to cause adverse health or environmental effects. Most air toxics originate from human Activities such as vehicle emissions, factories, solvents, etc. The Clean Air Act (CAA) requires EPA to regulate emissions of toxic air pollutants from a published list of industrial sources referred to as "source categories." These sources must meet control technology requirements for toxic air pollutants. The EPA is required to develop regulations for all industries that emit one or more of the pollutants in significant quantities. Ambient Air Toxic Monitoring is an important part of the efforts to control air toxics pollutant which consists of both national and community-scale programs. The ATMN consists of three separate monitoring programs: The Urban Air Toxics Monitoring Network (UATM), The National Air Toxics Trends Stations (NATTS), and The Community Assessment Monitoring program (CAMP).

 The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality currently operates two ambient air toxics monitoring programs in Virginia:

The Air Toxics Monitoring Steering Committee was established in 1999 to oversee the development of a national air toxics monitoring network. In 2002, EPA deployed the National Air Toxics Trends Stationsnetwork. The objective for the NATTS network is to provide long-term monitoring data for a limited number of air toxics across representative areas of the country in order to establish overall trends for these pollutants.  The required pollutants included Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Carbonyls, PM10 metals, Hexavalent chromium, and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs). 

The NATTS network currently consists of 27 sites (20 urban, 7 rural) across the United States.  In July 2008, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality began operating a NATTS located at the MathScience Innovation Center, 2401 Hartman Street, Richmond.