30.1 Sector Descriptions and Overview

In the NEI, we already cover the major sources of ammonia (NH3) air emissions, including livestock/animal waste and agricultural fertilizer application emissions. Direct ammonia emissions from humans also occur from such processes as breath, sweat, infant excretion, and from cigarette smokers. This work centers around estimating ammonia emissions for these and other lesser prominent, non-agricultural sources, that would tend to scale with urban populations, in addition to the human-based sources mentioned above, the other estimates described here occur from cat waste, dog waste, and deer excrement.

Emission impacts from the addition of these sources are expected to be minimal at the national and even State level; however, adding these as an EPA method serves to make the NEI more complete, one of the basic tenets we have with every NEI.

Table 30.1 lists the Source Classification Codes (SCCs) for these sources. All SCCs in Table 30.1 already existed in our EIS system and states could report emissions into them, but EPA did not have, until this time, any national methods to estimate most of the emissions that go into these SCCs. Please note that human respiration and human perspiration are summed into one SCC, which means the emission will also be summed; this SCC description was updated from SCC level 2 “Other Combustion” to “Human Physiological Processes”, and the old SCC (not shown here) was retired. The SCC level 1 description is “Miscellaneous Area Sources; Other Combustion” for all SCCs. The EIS Sector for the animal waste (cats, dogs, and deer) is “Agriculture - Livestock Waste” and the Sector for the remaining SCCs is “Miscellaneous Non-Industrial NEC”.

Table 30.1: Source Classification Codes used for non-agricultural/other sources of NH3.
SCC SCC Level 2 Description SCC Level 3 Description SCC Level 4 Description
2806010000 Domestic Animals Waste Emissions Cats Total
2806015000 Domestic Animals Waste Emissions Dogs Total
2807030000 Wild Animals Waste Emissions Deer Total
2810003000 Other Combustion Cigarette Smoke Total
2813010000 Human Physiological Processes Human Perspiration and Respiration Total
2813020000 Human Physiological Processes Diapers Total