VOC monitoring of waste processing sites has become an occasional requirement of the EA in permitting and maintenance of clinical waste site operations. It is doubtful that there is any unequivocal obligation to do this, but when someone gets a bee in his bonnet it is difficult to resist.
News from the Center for Environmental Research & Technology (CE-CERT), University of California, Riverside records results from a study of air pollution in the vicinity of commercial charbroilers – burger restaurants and other fast food restaurants – is doing more harm to the air quality than an 18-wheeler.
Researchers claim that the charbroilers send a staggering quantity of particulate matter into the ecosystem, more than any truck or factory smokestack.
This is particularly interesting. At least 4 years ago, Blenkharn Environmental was commissioned to run surveys of VOCs in several clinical waste treatment facilities. Levels were generally low but peaked occasionally when a vehicle arrived and parked in a receiving bay with its engine still running.
Further high level VOC readings were tracked to discarded alcohol hand rub containers in waste, and in the vicinity of alcohol hand rub dispensers where staff were sanitising their hands and releasing alcohol vapour to the atmosphere as the product evaporated from their hands.
Most perplexing were the exceptionally high VOC levels occurring intermittently, when the wind was blowing toward the site and perhaps when an extra rasher of bacon was dropped into the grill. With careful mapping of VOC levels around and beyond the site boundary it was clear that the local burger van parking just beyond the site boundary was the source of the incredibly high VOC levels.
Care is required in the measurement, recording and interpretation of VOC data, that can be badly skewed and affected by a variety of external sources. The risk, inevitably, is of a single static recording or a mindless daily average being interpreted incorrectly as indicative of a potentially polluting waste treatment process that might be the focus of unwanted and unnecessary regulatory attention.
It seems that US researchers confirm these observations. Blenkharn Environmental offers a rigorous assessment of VOCs at and around waste management and other sites, addressing in detail point source emissions as the ‘red herrings’ caused by the local burger van.