Smog Reyes, Point Reyes Station, CA

In an earlier paper the ozone-forming potential of n-propyl bromide (NPB) was studied with a new methodol-ogy designed to address issues associated with a marginal smog-forming compound. However, the U.S. Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA) subsequently revised its policy and now recommends using the Maximum Incre-mental Reactivity (MIR) scale to rank the ozone-forming potential of all volatile organic compounds (VOCs), in-cluding those of marginal ozone productivity. Neverthe-less, EPA contemplated exceptions to the box-model-derived MIR scale by allowing use of photochemical grid-model simulations for case specific reactivity assessments. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) also uses the MIR scale and CARB has a Reactivity Scientific Advisory Committee that can consider exceptions to the MIR scale. In this study, grid-model simulations that were recom-mended by EPA are used to evaluate the incremental ozone impacts of NPB using an update to the chemical mechanism developed in an earlier paper. New methods of analysis of the grid-model output are further developed here to quantify the relative reactivities between NPB and ethane over a wide range of conditions. The new grid-model-based analyses show that NPB is significantly dif-ferent and generally less in ozone-forming potential (i.e., reactivity) than predicted by the box-model-based MIR scale relative to ethane, EPA’s “bright-line ” test for non-VOC status. Although NPB has low reactivity compared to typical VOCs on any scale, the new grid-model analyses developed here show that NPB is far less reactive (and even has negative reactivity) compared to the reactivity predicted by the MIR scale