Exide community monitoring underway

Posted on 6 March 2009

Greater Wellington (GW) has commenced a second round of community-based monitoring to measure lead in air levels surrounding the Exide Technologies battery recycling plant in Petone.

Exide currently conducts deposition (‘dust fall') and ambient air monitoring on its plant boundaries and deposition monitoring in three community locations as a condition of its resource consent. Greater Wellington's monitoring will involve the same type of sampling at two sites outside the plant's boundary - one on Waione St and the other on Kirkcaldy St.

The monitoring involves dust particles in air being collected continuously over a 24 hour period every second day using high volume samplers at the two sites. Monitoring started this week and will run until the end of June this year.

Greater Wellington Environmental Regulation Team Leader Miranda Robinson says the community monitoring beyond the Exide site differs from the plant boundary monitoring that Exide currently undertakes.

"We are measuring average daily outdoor air quality in the community that can be used to assess human exposure to lead whereas Exide are measuring average weekly levels of fugitive emissions at their site boundary that are used to assess compliance with their resource consent limits."

Greater Wellington conducted community monitoring last year and although airborne lead levels were much lower than those monitored in 1999, Exide's factory was affected by several shutdowns during the monitoring period.

"We are repeating last year's programme because we did not get the quantity of data we wanted. Exide has assured us that this year there are no planned shut downs during the monitoring period."

Ms Robinson says the information gained will be important for assessing any risks to community health when Exide's consent is up for renewal in 2011.

* Download the report of the 2008 monitoring programme or for a hard copy please contact the Environment Helpdesk on 04 384 5708.