By TONY GEE
Air is to be monitored at 10 locations in Kaitaia from next month as Northland Health tries to detect whether any emissions from the town's Juken Nissho triboard mill are adversely affecting people's health.
Static air samplers have been ordered from suppliers and will be used in and around
Kaitaia to measure any presence of formaldehyde and nitrogen dioxide, two chemicals implicated in mill emissions.
The aim is to monitor the air in local environments where people live as compared with ongoing Northland Regional Council monitoring of air and emissions at the plant just north of the town.
Northland Health senior health protection officer Paul Reid said the exercise would start within a few weeks when the air monitors were delivered.
Specific sites and households where monitors would be placed had yet to be decided.
Last year, the health specialist contracted to the Ministry of Health, Dr Alistair Bingham, suggested air monitors should be distributed among people in Kaitaia who had been complaining of ill health which they attributed to chemical emission discharges from the mill during processing operations.
An earlier health impact assessment of mill emissions by an Auckland public health specialist found health risks from the mill were low.
But the health impact study said that some people living near the mill with pre-existing respiratory, skin, eye, nose and throat complaints could suffer adverse effects.
The air samplers for Kaitaia were ordered after Northland medical officer of health Dr Jonathan Jarman said Dr Bingham's review of the health impact study cast doubt on some findings because little of the study had been based on what was happening in the air around the mill.
No attempt was made to gauge the impact on people's health from mill emissions during occasional production "upsets" at the plant or problems during wood-processing operations. "To demonstrate poor health, we have to measure a chemical responsibly and its effect on people," Dr Jarman said.
The air samplers and emission monitoring will be discussed at a meeting of the Kaitaia community's mill liaison group on Thursday.
Herald Feature: Conservation and Environment
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