The Baton Rouge area is currently classified as being in severe non-attainment with the national ambient air standard for ozone. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) staff has conducted extensive investigations to identify emission sources that may have contributed to the ozone exceedances. While the causes for some episodes have been identified, many others have not. Surprisingly, several exceedances within the last two years occurred on days when ozone was not expected to be a problem. A concerted effort has been directed to comparing known ozone precursor chemicals of concern with the reported releases in the area. The LDEQ Surveillance staff has also conducted numerous inspections of the area's petrochemical facilities in the five- parish area to look for possible unreported releases. The inspections of fixed sites did not reveal the causes of these unsuspected ozone exceedances. However, the LDEQ still believes there are releases in the area that are not being reported or properly accounted for in the area's overall ozone air modeling efforts.
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