subject: The Use Of Humidity Tools Could Assist Manufacturers In Proving Pollution Claims [print this page] New regulations set out by the Environment Agency with regards to the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control directives relating to pig holding units may lead to an increase in the use of humidity measurement systems by manufacturers.
The agency has asked manufacturers of products that they think reduce air pollutants and smells from pig units which are mainly used in the agriculture industry to produce scientific evidence to back up their claims.
The purpose of IPPC is to stop, reduce and get rid of pollution by focusing their efforts on the industrial and agricultural activities that have the greatest impact.
The legislation runs the activities of major sites by regulating the use of both raw materials and energy, emissions into air, water and land, how waste is treated and accident prevention.
Furthermore, The Pig Site, the Environment Agency have stated that they want to see results from all the formal trials of products before they will accept the fact that the new technology can have a significant impact on the environmental performance of IPPC units.
It is telling manufacturers to contact them before scheduling trials so that it can state exactly what sort of evidence it wants to see.
"Measurements need to show the results are repeatable and not due to chance, probability or noise in the data," the agency was stated as saying by the website.
The trials will need to include full details of the process by which the work was carried out and also the final data and results.
The agency has also stated that it will need evidence to prove that the conditions were representative of real operating conditions, what temperature, humidity and ventilation rate were used and the breed and number of animals involved.
Furthermore, in order to provide an accurate temperature, humidity and ventilation data manufacturers will need to use dewpoint meters and humidity measurement tools when gathering the data.
As well as these tools, there are some sophisticated humidity products which can be bought in the market that will give users the power to determine very accurate humidity levels.
The Environment Agency was quoted as saying that it wanted to be involved in the early stages of the process to ensure that IPPC pig units dont install new technologies that dont have suitable supporting evidence.
