I agree with the Pearsons (Chronicle, August 22) that Horizons is ineffective with compliance issues around gaseous air emissions. They look for the stinky smells emitted in the middle of the night during 9-5 daylight hours.
Not only that, but when giving consents to discharge toxic gases that are detrimental to health, they say not to discharge to a level that makes people sick — but do not identify that level, and give multiple companies the same consent without taking into account cumulative effect. So how does each company know they are not emitting to a combined level that makes people sick? They do not know.
We do know that hydrogen sulphide is put through filters to remove the smell but not the toxicity in one company, and another emits it with the smell, yet the test for how much is in the air is supposedly conducted by six people who go and sniff the air, according to court documents I received under the Official Information Act.
On the bright side, however, the Public Health Officer wrote in a letter to the editor, on the same day as a tannery was fined a huge amount for a hydrogen sulphide accident, people would only get mild irritation like asthma, hay fever, coughs and watery eyes from hydrogen sulphide. We now have 28 per cent of children with that mild irritation asthma. One person's chronic illness is another person's mild irritation, it seems.
Good air quality should be advocated for by Whanganui District Council. Horizons should have cumulative effect taken into account when giving consents and a maximum combined level of toxic gases should be set. Recording and monitoring output should be expected. Public Health should have a way of collecting proper data about what goes into the air rather than just looking at company websites to see if they acknowledge polluting (which is what the Public Health Officer told me he does when I asked him).