Some considerations on indoor and outdoor impacts of different ways of pm release and odour emission in industrial sectors

Abstract

In the industrial sectors, the ways of release pollutants into the atmosphere can vary significantly. We can find various combinations of primary conveyed emissions, secondary conveyed releases, diffused emissions, depending on the characteristics of the industrial plant. When an environmental impact assessment is performed, discussion concerns mainly the impact on the public health, whilst the occupational impact of these releases is moved to other contexts. The present paper zooms on selected case studies in order to understand the consequences of different way of pollutant release on the outdoor and indoor air quality at the site of the plant (within the fence). Two kinds of pollutants were selected: particulate matter and odoriferous substances. Results demonstrate that the industrial sector is unbalanced: the regulations in force in EU give different attention to the impact of the releases to the atmosphere depending on the industrial sector. In particular, in some sectors the impact of diffused emissions is underestimated because of a raw management of their control. Some preliminary proposals are put forwards for a better management of the emissions to the atmosphere in potentially critical cases. These proposals are based on the concept that conveyed solutions for pollutant release must be preferred, with the care of designing the related stacks with an optimised combination of stack height, conveyed gas velocity, temperature at the exit. The opposition to this approach is basically related to the additional costs. This article demonstrate that these extra-costs are due in many cases. Their economic sustainability is discussed too.