VAN desperately needs summa canisters for air monitoring! Can you help?

VAN has made a lot of headway in the last month and half but we still need your help.  The FLIR camera that we are preparing to use is a qualitative tool.  It can show VOC’s and hydrocarbon fumes being emitted from the trains, but it can’t give us any information about the amounts.  We hope to add a few summa air monitoring canisters in order to determine the levels of VOC’s.  Our plan is to use the camera to find the most significant emissions being released then, using the summa canister, obtain an air sample from that area.


Summa Canister air monitoring costs $250 - $350 per sample.




 Summa canisters are small airtight metal containers. The summa canister is sent to the field under vacuum and certified leak-free. The canister fills with air at a fixed flow rate over a preset period of time with use of a flow controller.  After the canister is filled, it is sent to an analytical laboratory under the appropriate chain-of-custody protocol and analyzed. Very low detection limits, in the sub­parts per billion volume (ppbv) range are possible.

We’ll also need volunteers to help with the monitoring. If you’re interested, please get in touch with us at vancouveractionnetwork@gmail.com or 503-765-7176.