Warning sounded at Curry's Lane air monitoring station
Sydney - An air exceedance at a Curry's Lane fixed air monitoring
station is being reported by The Sydney Tar Ponds Agency.
The data
collected at a Whitney Pier station as part of the project's ambient air
monitoring program confirmed an exceedance of Benzo(a)pyrene on May 1.
According to the STPA, Benzo(a)pyrene is an odourless, polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) typically distributed during the incomplete
combustion of fossil fuels. It is present in automobile and diesel
exhaust and can be produced by various activities such as backyard
fires, coal burning and cigarette smoke.
Tanya Collier MacDonald,
manager of communications for the STPA, said the substance is likely not
the result of work on the Tar Ponds site. "Because of the way it is, we
would doubt it, but we are still investigating to determine the exact
source. It would have had been through burning of the fossil fuel. We
weren't doing any of those kinds of activities, except for diesel
trucks, which we have everywhere."
The project's fixed stations measure
air quality for a 24-hour period, corresponding with the six-day
National Air Pollution Surveillance schedule. Sample results are tested
and results reported to the STPA within about two weeks. The sample in
question showed a value of 3.41 nanograms per cubic metre (ng/m3) over a
24-hour period ending midnight, May 1. The 24-hour criterion for the
project is 1.1 ng/m3.
The monitoring station was downwind of remediation
activities underway on the coke ovens site. There are fixed air wind
monitoring stations set up throughout the city.
|