A single-day workshop on sampling dioxin and furan pollutants emitted from industrial plants was held on Tuesday at the Department of Environment in cooperation with German experts.
According to a report by IRNA, the workshop was attended by officials at Germany's Federal Ministry of the Environment and German Corporation for International Cooperation (aka GIZ).
Shina Ansari, director of the DOE’s Environmental Monitoring Office, hailed the event as a good start for efficient emission measurement in the country.
"Precise sampling, measurement and analysis of dioxin and furan pollutants place the country at an advantage because none of regional countries currently have this capability," she said.
Being a party to Stockholm and Basel conventions, the Iranian government passed a directive on April 2016 under which a threshold was determined for dioxin and furan industrial emissions.
Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants is an international environmental treaty, signed in 2001 and effective from May 2004, that aims to eliminate or restrict the production and use of persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, usually known as the Basel Convention, is another international treaty that was designed to reduce the movements of hazardous waste between nations, and specifically to prevent their transfer from developed to less developed countries.
DOE, as the country's top authority in charge of observing the conventions, is responsible for monitoring, measurement and control of contaminants in heavily polluting industries.
Accurate Gauge
"Fortunately, a highly accurate chromatograph has been installed at DOE's central laboratory that is capable of measuring gas compounds of dioxin and furan in air samples," Ansari said.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, there are 188 hazardous air pollutants known to cause cancer and other serious health impacts. Among them are dioxin and dioxin-like compounds (DLCs) that are mostly by-products of various industrial processes and furan that is a colorless, flammable, highly volatile and toxic gas and can be carcinogenic in humans.
All pollutant categories are discharged from mobile sources such as vehicles, to a minor degree from gas stations and fire incidents besides larger sources such as factories and power plants.
Given Iran's membership in Stockholm convention, monitoring the two pollutants in major industries such as cement production and waste incineration is essential.
Hence, a comprehensive session on the measurement of pollutants was scheduled to be held in the near future in Tehran with the collaboration of German authorities, Ansari noted.
