 Well, hello everyone. Many thanks for joining us for HydroTerror's next webinar in our webinar series. We've got a great turnout, so I really do appreciate you guys spending the time. So today's topic is managing our air under the new Environment Protection Act. Now, recently we had a representative from EPA speaking on this topic. However, unfortunately, he was caught up and could no longer present, but we're very fortunate to have Paul Baynham fill his shoes. Paul's a specialist in air quality monitoring from a company known as Moat Ltd. He has got 25 years experience in air quality monitoring around the world, including countries such as Europe, US, Asia and the Middle East. And he is currently a senior air quality scientist with Moat. We've worked with Moat for several years on and off, and they provide us with guidance around various technologies for air quality monitoring. Importantly, Paul used to be head of CAVINS, which is the main industry guidance association or clean air society of New Zealand. He is no longer in that role, but he was formally head of that for several years. So let's do our presentation. Here we are. So before we get charging into this, we love to get your questions and they form a really important part of these webinars. So if you want to ask a question, please use that Q&A section, which is at the top of your screen, and type in your questions there. Please don't use the chat because it gets a bit tricky if we've got two things going at once. So into that Q&A button is the best way to go. Why do we run these webinar series? Well, we like to generate awareness of things that are going on, and there's certainly a lot going on in the world of ambient air quality monitoring and regulation. We also like to facilitate training both in the technologies for monitoring and in the regulations that are important in that area. Finally, we like to understand industry needs, and that's where we love to get your feedback through that Q&A process. So in terms of the sort of running sheet for today, I will be talking to the changes in regulations. Jason from the EPA has been very generous with providing me with many notes on this. So I will run through that. In terms of moving to, I guess, the adaptive management side of air quality and where the whole industry needs to go, that's where Paul is going to draw upon his local and international experience and share some case studies around where he sees this area going. And then we will run through some case studies. And finally, we will have some time for Q&A. All right, so for those of you who aren't aware, there is a new EPA Act out. It came out in July, and we've run several webinars on that. Rather than going over too much old ground, we will be circulating this webinar which has links to the EPA site which has a bunch of YouTube and a whole lot of guidance around what the new EPA Act is all about. So I would stress due to that and look at some of those guidance documents because the game is changing. Importantly, I'm going to spend quite a bit of time talking about the environment reference standard which is Publication 1992 which came out in June 2021. I will go into that in some detail. I would really stress to yourselves that there's a great guidance document called Guide to the Environment Reference Standard which has a whole lot of detail around this. It also really provides you with guidance on how these criteria are meant to be used in the context of this new framework. So I will be talking to that in some depth today. Okay, so in terms of the regulatory framework and how it's changed, it's not just the Act that's changed. It's obviously a lot of the subordinate regulation that sits under that Act. That's important to understand that. So the state environmental protection policies don't exist anymore, for example, and a whole lot of the guidance documents that you may have traditionally thought of as your bibles to guide your work are now either being rewritten or they are being linked to this new legislation. So not all is new, but quite a bit is new. At the heart of the new regs, it really is a set of obligations on duty holders. So duty holders are people who have the potential to impact on the environment. So the cornerstone of the Act is this thing called the general environmental duty. Now, a lot of you may have heard about that already. So I might be going over a bit of old ground for you, but it's important to understand this. The general environmental duty requires Victorians to understand and minimize their risks of harm from pollution and waste to human health and the environment. Now, that's an incredibly important sentence in this new framework, because it used to be that we would play the game of there were criteria to be met, and as long as we met those criteria, our liability was limited. These days, that is no longer the case. The criteria there to let us into what a sort of minimum standard should be, but they are not enough on their own. What is enough on your own is to comply with your general environmental duty. So that means in some instances, the EPA will require you to do more than what's set out in the criteria and they'll be perfectly defendable position to do that. What does that mean? Well, with respect to the general environmental duty, there's five matters that must be considered to determine what is reasonably practicable for you to have done. It needs to look at the likelihood of a risk of insuating, the potential degree of harm, the duty holders knowledge about the risks, the availability and suitability of controls, and the cost of control. Now, some of those are fairly loaded dot points, right? Like the duty holders knowledge about the risks. Well, it's no longer enough to say you didn't know. Like, for example, this guide to the environment reference standard really provides enough guidance to link you to practically all the various guidance documents associated with the Act. To say that you weren't aware of that document is not going to be in a defendable position. So there's a lot more onus coming on us as side operators and the like to make sure that we are actually meeting this general environmental duty. And there's some really significant fines and things associated with not meeting that. So it has real teeth. All right. So on to the environmental reference standard. As I mentioned earlier, this is really replacing those state environmental protection policies we're all probably familiar with. The Act states under section 93 that the ERS is to be used to assess and report on environmental conditions in the whole or any part of Victoria. Okay. So what that means is that this is a really important guidance document on how to assess and report on environmental conditions. But compliance with the criteria within the ERS does not necessarily mean you're meeting your general environmental duty. It's really important that's repeated many times in this guidance document. Why is that so important? Because the intent of the Act is to move away from a compliance structure to one of continuous improvement. Sorry before we move on. So this triangle on the right just sort of provides you with a bit of an idea of the environment protection framework. So you can see that the ERS level there is really immediately below the Act. So it's the subordinate legislation there. There are other subordinate legislation as well. So there's things like compliance codes, orders that the EPA can raise, for example, as well as strike regulations. But the ERS or this environmental reference standard is most applicable to the topic of today. Okay. So I've been through this guide to the environment reference standard in some detail for you. And in terms of the things that I now will follow up on, I do strongly stress that you read that guidance, but I've tried to pull out the nub of it for you today. So the ERS includes the following components. Environmental values, which is a statement about a desired outcome for human health and the environment. These used to be called beneficial uses in the old sense, right? Then we have indicators defined in relation to each environmental value. So once again, these used to be criteria is shaded to beneficial uses. They've now decided to call those in the bottom of it. The indicators are the parameters used to assess whether environmental values are being achieved or maintained or if they are threatened. Objectives are the assessment benchmarks. An objective is the concentration or amount of an indicator used to assess whether an environmental value is being achieved, maintained or threatened. We used to call these criteria and these used to be the sacred cow. If you could design a facility to meet those particular objectives, then we thought that was good design and that was well done. These days under this new regime, it's not quite the same. We need to be showing that we're, to the maximum extent, practicable, reducing emissions, full stop. Areas of application. The ERS defines the areas or the area or areas to which the environmental values or specific indicators and objectives apply. For example, the environmental values, indicators and objectives for ambient air apply to the whole of Victoria. All right. So we used to have a whole lot of separate state environmental protection policies, but they're sort of bundled together in this document. So the ERS is itself made up of many reference standards. These reference standards are in groups that cover four aspects of Victoria's environment. Ambient air, ambient sound, land and water, which includes both surplus water and groundwater. And many of the reference standards that you would have grown familiar with over the years are still really used in this documentation. Okay. So they've been effectively shaded home to this. And there's a good reason for that. They were based on solid science. So there's no reason for a lot of them to inch. Gotta refresh my memory on this one. Sorry. The most important thing out of this slide is the ERS does not override the GED. There is no fundamental connection between the GED and the attainment of specified objectives of environmental quality. So using objectives in this way would undermine the regulatory potential of the framework. So that's a direct quote out of this guide. So what does that mean? Let's stop and ponder that for a minute. Sorry. It means that if we meet those criteria that we've just looked at, it doesn't mean we're meeting the GED because there is no fundamental connection between the two. The EPA is looking at how we run our facilities in a different context. We're using the ERS to help guide us in the way we do things to sort of come up with what we think a reasonable performance measure may be. But at the end of the day, satisfying the EPA that we've met our general environmental duty is done by showing that we're continuously improving, that we are doing the best we can do to the extent practicable. So the ERS does not indicate levels up to which a person can lawfully pollute. That's what the criteria used to be. To meet the GED, a duty holder must minimize risks so far as reasonably practicable, including where that would provide a level of environmental quality greater than the threshold for achieving or maintaining environmental values of the ERS. So I think that I probably laboured that point enough. Please keep that in mind. I'll skip over that next bit. Actually, I will read that out. So ambient ear monitoring and management proposals should not be designed simply to make the quantified objectives in the ERS. So in the past, we used to design facilities to meet those criteria. You no longer do that. You design it to the maximum extent practicable to avoid pollution. In particular, a proposal should not be reverse engineered so that the measures it proposes to comply with the GED are selected on the basis that they are sufficient to meet the ERS. Then they go on to say it is unlikely that measures developed in this way will actually comply with the GED. So there you go. So a different driver now for how we design and minimise pollution of air. Well, it's actually of all parameters. So what's the process? Well, the process is still very similar to what we're all used to. Step one, you look at the environmental values. Identify your areas of application or segments established for each area, the environmental values that apply. Step two, you undertake your monitoring and assessment. You determine the indicators and objectives. You measure and monitor the indicators. You compare the measure measured indicators against the objectives considering the uncertainty of the measurement. Step three is your interpretation. So considerations are the environmental values achieved, maintained or threatened. What is the degree of risk to the environmental values? Is the risk addressed and how? As far as reasonably practicable. Now, that's a really important one. And what is the residual risk? You then undertake your reporting, make your management decisions about practice change and reassess. That's a pretty good process, right? So what they're saying is use the indicators to sort of track your performance, that make sure you're optimising your performance to the maximum extent practicable. In this ultimate guide to the environment reference standard, you'll find a couple of sections that I urge you to read. Chapter four on ambient air and then appendix A. So there they go into quite a bit of detail about the derivation of various criteria and that sort of thing. I need to be conscious of time. Okay, so this is really just to highlight how things have changed, right? What happened to the beneficial uses? The beneficial uses from the state environmental protection policy ambient air quality are now in the ERS as environmental values along with their relevant indicators and objectives. What happened to the NEPM? Well, prior to the commencement of this ERS process, Victoria's implementation of the National Environmental Protection Ambient Air Quality Measure was through the SEP. So like many other documents linked to that environment, the old Environment Protection Act, the NEPM is now effectively linked to the ERS. What happened to the SEP, Air Quality Management? The ERS replaces the SEP. All right, so a lot of change. So the ERS generally adopts the objectives in the NEPM with some modifications, including a lower PM10 annual standard of 20 micrograms per meter cube compared with the 25 micrograms per meter cube in the NEPM. The ERS also contains other environmental values, indicators and objectives that are not in the NEPM. So they do have a new category for example. These include environmental value of useful life and aesthetic appearance of buildings, structures, property and materials. So we all know that air pollution affects those things. They now actually make us consider that. So what are the six environmental values for ambient air? Life, health and well-being of humans. Life, health and well-being of other forms of life, including the protection of ecosystems and biodiversity, local amenity and aesthetic enjoyment, visibility, the useful life and aesthetic appearance of building structures, property and materials and climate systems. Now there are no criteria around the climate systems at the moment, but they recognize that we have signed up to international agreements around reducing emissions for example. I may leave you to read through these separately to myself because we're going to run out of time for Paul otherwise. Actually I can probably fit that one in. So in terms of indicators and objectives, the indicators and objectives for ambient air are provided in Table 2.2 and Clause 6 of the ERS. So that's where you go to find those. Then Table 4.1 in EPA Publication 192 provides an overview of their derivation and interpretation. So you may say, well what's that publication? Well that's this one, the guide to the environment reference standard. So if you read that standard and you read the ERS, you'll be in good hands. Most of the indicators are presented as concentrations expressed in parts per million for gaseous pollutants or in micrograms per cubic meter for particulates. Note, many of the ERS ambient air objectives do not represent a level below which air pollution concentrations present an acceptable risk to human health. That's a direct quote. So what that means is to meet your GED, you may well have to go lower than those criteria set in here. That's just a little bit of an extract from that Table 4.1 that I mentioned. It shows how they've laid out the indicators on the left and how they derive the derivation of the objective of those. So they actually give the reference document that that's sheeded home to, which is pretty useful and they provide some interpretation. So there's a really comprehensive table in this guide to the environment reference standard worth a look. Important to note that the indicators and objectives only represent a limited set of pollutants, okay? But that doesn't mean that we don't need to monitor them. It just means they don't have criteria for them. So in some applications, you will need to develop your own criteria on your own indicators and monitor for those. And that really is on a side-by-side basis, depending on what you're doing. Okay. So finally, how can the industry apply the ERS? You can refer to these Zambian Air Environmental Values indicators and objectives, and you saw a sort of process for how we can go through and assess and monitor. And that can help inform your as a record or a report, if you like, of how you're going with respect to your general environmental duty. But it's not to say whether or not you comply against that general environmental duty. It's a bit like a scoreboard, but it's not a true measure of your effort. So the GED is the one that the EPA is more interested these days. If you need to be able to prove that you are doing these things, and that's why we have the ERS, it provides indicators to help prove that we are performing well. I'll skip on that last dot point. Okay. So a few things have gone. We used to rely on a guide to the sampling and analysis of air emissions and air quality. That one has now been superseded. If you click on the links in this brief here, you'll be able to find the new documents. There's another one coming. Okay. It's got a pretty awkward abbreviation, but it's the guideline for assessing and minimizing air pollution in Victoria. This is publication 1961. So this is pretty important in the context of us doing air quality monitoring. So this guideline provides a framework for assessing risks to the environment and human health from air emissions, provides new air quality assessment criteria, which replace the design criteria in the state environmental protection policy for air quality management. It provides guidance on modelling, monitoring, and risk assessment methods, and guidance on how to minimize air emissions and manage any remaining risks. So what's the status on this document? Well, it's finished with its consultation, and it's due to be released before the end of this year. So well on the way. Another guidance document relevant to today is EPA Publication 1883. Now, this is very much in draft, but it has been released to the Kazantz Committee and their membership. And if you want to have a look at what that draft looks like, we've put a link in here for you to have a look. But you can see it's going to address levels one, two, and three of ODA assessment and how to assess the risk of ODA. Now, I'm about to hand over to Paul, but just in summary around the regs, traditional regulation involved setting a limit and assessing compliance with that limit. We're now moving towards a regime of adaptive management where we need to do the most that's practicable to do. And it's quite a shift to do that. Without further ado, I will hand over to Paul. Thank you, Richard. And hello, everyone there. As Richard pointed out, my name is Paul Boehner. Just a quick point of clarification. Richard indicated that I was the president of Kazantz. I should just clarify I was a branch president of Kazantz. So I just want to clarify that before we proceed. So following on from Richard, who's basically done the really hard work in terms of digging into the regulations, my job's relatively easy by comparison. I'm just addressing how I think the regulations can be interpreted from a monitoring perspective. So as Richard suggested, traditional regulation or the old regs basically involved setting a limit and then simply assessing compliance with that limit. Next slide. Yep, next slide. Sorry about that. That's all good, Richard. So basically previously, it was relatively prescriptive and was often quite standards driven. I'm talking about the monitoring here. So in many cases, the monitoring for equality required compliance with a particular standard often required particular types of equipment. And generally, that equipment was quite specialized both in and relatively expensive to run. So here in Victoria, site operators frequently manage that equipment that elsewhere in both Australia and internationally, the equipment either may be managed by regulators on the boundary on the behalf or sometimes a combination of the two. Next slide. So why have the regulators decided to move away from this? So this is part of an international trend largely. And it reflects the fact that the setting a compliance limit is often retrospectively looking at whether that limit was complied with or not. It doesn't really bring into consideration the fact that in many cases, the site operators have some ability to manage those emissions and improve on them over time. So the previous regulations are really focused on reducing an emission or complying with a particular limit, but going no further. Now, the regulators really recognize, for example, if we look at particulate, the limits for particulate as Richard indicated earlier, don't necessarily indicate the safe level for human health. In fact, so far we haven't found a safe level for human health for particulate. Now, what it basically does is it brings the level down to a risk that's deemed to be acceptable. However, over time, the regulators would like those levels to drop further recognizing that at present there has not been a safe level detected. The other issue is with that compliance is that it generally leads to quite high costs. And that reflects the fact that the equipment and the servicing involved is relatively expensive. Next slide. So where to from here, as Richard indicated, we're sort of on a bit of a journey towards a continual improvement or what's also internationally referred to as an adaptive management technique. So what does this involve? Well, basically, essentially, it involves the compliance monitoring, which is Richard indicated the RS. But it's also indicating it's imposing an emphasis on site operators or site managers to demonstrate they're taking proactive approaches so that they're not just complying with the limit, they need to demonstrate that they're going further than that. Where there is a breach or a problem, they're taking action prior to that where possible. They're also taking continual improvement. What effectively that means is learning from past mistakes and putting in place actions to prevent things from occurring in the future. So for example, if you have a continual problem with a particular piece of picket or plant, and every three and a half weeks it causes a problem, there would be an expectation that over time you would look into the frequency of those issues and look at what can be done to reduce them. Now, one interesting thing that has occurred internationally as a result of this is often requires collaboration with neighbouring operators. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but those of you who manage sites, and I understand it's probably the majority of people listening to this webinar, you'll be well aware that you don't exist in the bubble, that there are things occurring around your site. And frequently it's the cumulative effects of those that can give rise to complaints. Next slide. So yeah, so basically what I'm going to touch on now is I don't want to spend too long on this, but effectively what I'm going to do is look at a couple of examples of how I see this changing. Now before I go on, I should just point out two things. Firstly, these regulations are new, the Act is new, and the interpretation is likely to change over the course of the next few years as people become more familiar with the concepts of terms and case laws developed. So just bear in mind that what I'm outlining here in my talk is basically based on what I've seen occurring internationally in relation to similar legislation that's been introduced in other parts of the world. But you know, over time it may change slightly or somewhat just depending on particular circumstances. So I'm going to touch on a couple of things. One is a tunneling and construction type project, and in many cases that'll involve emissions in particular. And then I'm also going to touch on wastewater lagoons and particularly the gas and odor monitoring side of things. Thank you, Richard. So just a quick refresh, and I apologize for the people that know this. Basically particulate matter or PM is a collective term. It basically covers both solid and liquid particles suspended in the air. And this can range from big particles, thanks Richard. Hopefully not that big, to very small particles, thanks Richard. And those are the ones that typically the regulators are most interested in. So in in terms of the regulations, they'll often talk about PM 10, PM 2.5, or TSP. And the dust nuisance effects are often the larger particles, those are 20 microns and above them basically collectively referred to as TSP or total suspended particulate. The health effects that the regulators are also concerned with are often PM 10 and below, increasingly becoming PM 2.5, and internationally there is now a trend towards the monitoring of PM 1. Thank you, Richard. So what can happen? Well, this is an example of a solar panel deployed in the field. There's been an activity adjacent to it that's covered the solar panels with dust. In this case, it was a regulated solar panels, and obviously they got somewhat disappointed when they lost power. So this is obviously a clear example of a dust nuisance event. Thanks, Richard. So in terms of ambient monitoring associated with tunneling and construction, typically there are the two sort of primary stages involved with tunneling and construction. The first one is the construction stage, and that's often focused on dust nuisance and particles associated with the entry and exit points, often maybe associated with vehicle movements, the transport of materials to and from the tunneling and boring machines. And then once the tunnel is completed, there's often an operational phase that's often associated with exhaust emissions and sometimes associated with modeling and verification. So we'll touch on those a little bit now. Thanks, Richard. So if we look at the construction phase, traditionally there will be a relatively small number of fixed monitoring stations often placed around tunneling exits, and relatively expensive instruments. So the cost between $40,000 and $70,000 to install, and then you've got operating and service costs, which are anywhere between $20,000 and $30,000 a year. Most of these units require mains power, and they're often in very fixed locations. Thanks, Richard. So this is a brief rundown, and those of you who do this type of monitoring will probably be familiar with this type of instrument. The photograph on the left shows a typical station, basically with a fence around it. And then there's three types of instruments that are commonly used. The one on with the black inlet is a Teom tapered element oscillating microbalance. The one in the middle is a BAM, and the one on the right is basically an optical nephelometer, but it's polychromatic. Thanks, Richard. So how does the new act change this? Well, basically what we'll see is that, I mean, I suspect what we're going to see is that there's still be a requirement for those instruments that are currently in place. But what we'll probably see over time is increasing numbers of smaller instruments. They're usually optical instruments, and they transmit data in real time. Now, these instruments range in price from $50. You can buy them on eBay through to $50,000 for the more expensive units. Typically, the units for this type of application are going to be in a price range of between $6,000 and $10,000. And I'll cover off a little bit more about these in a moment. Thanks, Richard. So this is a photograph of a typical type of instrument. This particular one has a meteorological instrument attached to the top. And what we're starting to see is that these are not reference analyzers. These do not meet the standards that were set previously. But what they can do is provide quite a bit of an additional information, and the smaller the light of the portable. Thanks, Richard. So what we tend to see is during the next phase of the tunnel operation, once the commissioning is underway, there's often distributed networks increasingly being used to validate models. And these low-cost particle monitors generally have really good agreement with those big expensive analyzers at very small particle sizes of between PM2.5 and below. They tend to be very useful, whether it's a high level of public interest or concern, because they can be cited adjacent to complainants' properties on lamp posts or in the vicinity of parks where people congregate. So they're often more mobile and portable. As concerns or public perception changes, these things can be relocated to different locations, particularly with roadway construction. Often the tension points will move as the road construction completes. In terms of the commissioning and operation of tunnels, they're often deployed or co-deployed with integrated gas monitoring options, such as NOx monitoring, typically interested in NONNO2 and carbon monoxide. Thanks, Richard. That's just one example of basically some monitoring in this particular location. It was in the vicinity of a tunnel exit. Thanks, Richard. So what are the advantages and disadvantages of these low-cost particle monitors? Well, just keep going, Richard, until you cover off all those advantages. I'm just going to go over these fairly quickly. Many of you will be aware of this anyway. So they're fairly cost effective. They're simple to operate, easy to deploy. They can often be run on solar. They don't require mains power. The high resolution, now, that has some big implications for taking action. Okay, so some of those reference analyzers, they'll produce 10-minute or 30-minute averages. These devices will produce one-minute averages with, you know, 60 or more readings in that one minute. So what that means is that if there is a high value that's leading to an event, the site managers can take action before there is a breach of consent. And that really comes back to some of those general environmental duties that I think are outlined in the act that Richard covered. The devices will transmit data in real time. They're obviously set up to send text and emails. And as I mentioned earlier, they're very good agreement with reference analyzers that those smaller particle sizes, they can be coupled with met monitoring relatively easily. And the advantages, they can often be rented for a short time as well. So there's no cost in terms of having to purchase these things, if you're just doing a small validation study. So the disadvantage of these things, obviously, they're less accurate for large particle monitoring. I can go into that in detail, but I suspect most of the people here will know the reasons why that is. They're also less accurate where there's multiple sources of particular. One of the reasons for that is these devices basically count particles and then apply a correction factor. That correction factor assumes that all particles have the same density. And what that means is that if you've got particles of different density coming in, perhaps construction activity, diesel smoke, but a sea salt, something else occurring on another day, then the accuracy of the instruments tends to become more unreliable. The other disadvantage is that there's a large number of monitors on the market, okay? I think at last count, I counted over 140 of them, there's probably more now. And it can be quite confusing to select the correct advice. Some of them are simply random number generators. And some of the key features that are essential to make good measurements are outlined there. Thanks, Richard. So just in summary, in terms of these low-cost particle options, they're great as an early warning tool, often as part of a distributed network. And some of those accuracy issues that I mentioned in the previous slide can be addressed in part by co-locating them with a reference analyzer. So some of those more expensive analyzers that we talked about earlier, you can co-locate these smaller cheaper devices alongside those to develop a correction factor and then distribute them and move them around as things change. And they're also very useful for post-construction validation studies. So the slide on the right there just shows an example of a number of these devices just being mounted alongside a reference analyzer just to develop that correction factor I mentioned earlier. Thanks, Richard. So now we're just going to touch on gas monitoring of lagoons. So traditional monitoring stations, those of you who operate those type of wastewater treatment plants will be well aware of the types of gas monitoring. I'm not going to go into detail, but typically hydrogen sulfide, ammonia or VSE monitoring. Thanks, Richard. And here's a few examples. The one on the left is basically a reference analyzer. It's associated with, in this case, a fairly small landfill pond desludging. It causes a number of odor complaints. So there was some monitoring implications there. And then on the right-hand side, just some odor monitoring. This particular one is a static sample, but the sample in question can be used to collect samples periodically. Thanks, Richard. So how does this progress in terms of the new act? We're seeing internationally trend for multiple methane monitors. Sometimes these are co-located with organosulfoenosis, although I'll put a bit of a caution on those devices shortly. And they're often used as part of a distributed network around a boundary of a property. They can provide some useful insight into ambient concentrations, but they really need to be used in conjunction with metrological monitoring. Obviously, the way the wind speed and wind direction is absolutely critical for ambient monitoring. So just as I mentioned earlier, some of those E-nose devices are available and they do work. But my experience with them today is they do suffer from a number of different effects, including humidity. They do tend to drift a bit. And there are a number of positive interferences. The most common ones that people have encountered are alcohols, but there are a number of others as well. So I guess while they're a work in progress, I would just caution people to just be a little bit careful with those E-nose devices. Long-term outdoor deployments have generally had limited success to date. I am aware of a few cases where they have worked well, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Thanks, Richard. And that's just an example of an E-nose device that's been developed by NASA for monitoring various things on spacecraft. But that gives you an idea of the type of devices that are being used. Thanks, Richard. So in terms of landfills, obviously traditionally, people do basically surveys, landfill surveys, often with either people walking or using PID units. There's a photo ionisation detector. The ones we tend to use are basically differential optical methods. That's just basically a folded beam. Thanks, Richard. So on the left, you can just see on the front of the golf cart, there's basically one of those folded beam devices. It's got basically about a 15-metre path length. Just bounces the beam inside and back, just measures methane. And it produces a spatial map. So the image on the right is typically what you see. Those people that operate these types of things will be very familiar with these types of maps. They're basically highlight areas where there are methane gases arising. And very commonly, there's quite strong relationship between odorous gases. Your organic soft compounds typically are sometimes amines associated with those methane deposits. Thanks, Richard. So what you tend to do then is, once you've got spatial surveys, the next thing you can look at is flux measurements, or potentially Yeti covariance. So that's getting a little bit sophisticated for most of our applications. Basically involves putting a monitor over some of those hot spots that we've identified before, and just measuring how they're changing over time. For both landfill, in particular, there is obviously a change in time as the landfill ages, and there's necessary to resurvey. But typically, they're used commonly. Well, not commonly. Occasionally, we're seeing optical flux towels used for this, but they're quite expensive and very specialized equipment. Some of you will be aware of the flu technology, forward-looking infrared. It's reduced in price, but still quite expensive. And it tends to be more useful for spot readings and indicators, although I am aware increasingly it has been used as permanent mounts to overlook a particular site. So what we're starting to see now is for this general environmental directors to try and look at open path monitoring alongside low-cost detectors around the boundary of the site. So this typically represents what we call BPR, best practical option, best practical means, depending on which part of the world you're in. Thanks, Richard. And that's just an image from a flu camera. This particular one is taken showing some emissions from the tundra in Siberia, just showing the basically methane escapes from particular parts of the tundra. Thank you. All right. So I'm probably going to pass back to Richard now. And thank you again for your time. Well, thanks very much, Paul. We've got quite a few questions to get through. So I'll sum up quickly. The key learnings, I think, to take home from this is there's a lot of new regulation. I've done my best to get my head around that for you today. Compliance with the ERS criteria is not necessarily enough to meet the general environmental duty. So we're moving towards more about what's the maximum we can do to prevent emitting. Absence of the criteria in the ERS does not mean a parameter, does not need to be monitored. New guidance on how to monitor ambient air pollution has been finalised and will be released before the end of 2021. New odor guidance is on its way. And adaptive management and continuous monitoring of performance appears to be the trend for the future. And I would say that what Paul's shown us today, that the trend will be towards probably multi-sensor low-cost networks or low-cost multi-sensor networks, moving away from such a dependence on reference stations. So over to Q&A. We've got a lot to get through. No one's followed my instruction of not typing in the chat, but that's okay. We'll start with the Q&A, though. David Detrick. It's interesting to see odor in the ERS and objectives as free of offensive odors monitored by complaints or odor units. Good question. I think we might wait for that new odor guidance document to come out at the moment, the way that we're assessing odor as not that guidance hasn't changed yet, but there's a change on the way. Simon Tremlett. The new guidelines more aligned with the US EPA or the more restrictive EU standards. I'm not sure, Simon, to be honest, but perhaps Paul, do you have a context of the EU standards and the US EPA standards? Yeah, they both basically provide a bit of a backstop. So you'll be aware that there is clear compliance limits, but increasingly what we're seeing now are things like good practice guides or best practice BPO and BPM coming on top of that, and that's where the general environmental directives or the continual improvement is kind of an additional layer that is superimposed on top of those standards. I don't think the new guidelines are necessarily aligned with either the US EPA or the EU. It's just more of an international trend towards just continually improvement rather than polluting up to a standard. Okay. Are there any vibration standards in the ERS? That's a good question. David, you've got a lot of questions here. I might email you separately in response to these given a short amount of time I've got to answer those other chat questions. So I'll shoot you an email in response to those questions, including the one about noise. Back on Simon Tremlett, how does the cost of maintaining distributed systems compare when QAL2 and QAL3 requirements are to be met? Do you have an answer to that question, Paul? No, I don't actually, Simon. That is a good question. Typically, the more detailed the distribution system, the more cost is involved. I think that's probably a case-by-case basis. I've seen other jurisdictions where the cost is effectively goes up almost by an order of magnitude each time. I don't think that is the case in this context. And I think it really comes down to a case-by-case scenario. So I probably can't provide any more detail than that. I'm afraid, Simon. So just before we move off that one, Paul, obviously the capital expenditure for these sort of low-cost sensor networks would initially be cheaper, like comparing with the reference station. Are you saying that over the long period you think because there's just more sensors out there it's going to cost more to maintain? No, not necessarily. I think what typically happens with these types of things is the regulators like to retain the existing monitoring array that's already in place. So that's those reference stations. What they like to do is supplement it with lower cost monitoring. In time, what you can do is use that lower cost monitoring to demonstrate that some of those reference stations are superfluous and no longer needed simply because another reference station is capable of covering that information. So in the medium to long term the costs tend to come down. The cost of those lower monitoring devices I've given people an indication of the likely cost associated with that. But it tends to be a compliance plus rather than an alternative. Right. Okay, so we would need to shift away from the EPA's current sort of I guess certified systems to measure in compliance to a greater acceptance of these more indicator. Yeah, the EPA has accepted. I mean they do use these devices themselves for various studies. So there is a general acceptance. They have a place. I think some of the criticisms and some of those disadvantages we touched on are well, you know, the EPA's well aware of those. And they'll be just looking at saying, hey, look, if we're going to use these instruments, they're great for certain tasks. And one of those tasks, it seems to me is very clearly fits quite nicely into that GED, no general environmental directive of basically continuing improving things and demonstrating that improvement particularly where it may not be obvious from a traditional reference station. Okay, now we're going to move to the chat section. Has quite a few in it. Nice photo of Altona coastline from David. So we've got some two and fro communication. Sorry, I have seen that one. Thumbs up from someone. Thank you. Could you please tell us what are the most common problems, main contaminants about urban things? Well, not today. Just happy, but more than happy to discuss with you. In terms of the main contaminants around air quality, though, Paul, what would you say the big ones are? Traditionally, in urban areas, they tend to be previously they were particulate, but we've seen internationally particulate levels have dropped. We're seeing increasing levels of nitrogen dioxide and in around urban centers in that that is just reflective of the change in vehicle emission technology over time. So it's becoming more problematic for a couple of areas. As temperatures increase in various parts of the world, we're also seeing ozone increasingly becoming a bit of a challenge. And there are some great low cost ozone monitoring devices entering the market these days. So in terms of urban pollutants, I would say CO is carbon monoxide is generally no longer an issue. Perhaps in some third world countries, it may be, but largely it's been dealt with. CO2 is and the World Health Organization guidelines are likely to show reductions in international standards there. So those guidelines are going to become more restrictive over time. We'll probably see smaller time horizons for particulate. And we're seeing with increasing vehicles, sorry, increasing EVs on the market, electric vehicles, we're seeing those non tailpipe emissions, things like brake entire wear starting to become a little bit more problematic. So I suspect the focus will become on those things over time. Thanks, Richard. I wondered, I did want to ask you about is I know that Moat was involved with, I think it was a university over there in Auckland setting up a a broad monitoring network for wood smoke. Were you involved in that project? Yeah, we are. We do quite a bit of wood smoke monitoring in various centres here in New Zealand. We don't always have the sunny warm climates that the Australian northern parts of Australia tend to enjoy, although I am aware that you guys have a bit of a wood smoke problem in Melbourne, certain parts of Melbourne, certainly down in Tasmania as well. So we've done a bit of work there and it's been quite interesting. The granularity you can get from those small monitors really shows that where the reference analysers may not necessarily be capturing where those peak emissions are. And also the modelling that has been done on some of those communities wasn't really capturing what was happening at all. So when we actually went and did the monitoring, we found quite a different picture than what was actually predicted, which has caused the modellers to re-evaluate their models and improve them as a consequence. So it's kind of been a bit of a win-win for everyone. One thing that interested me in that project was, I was talking with Brett Wells about this, was the ability to detect when you needed to go out and check the function of a sensor based on the predicted concentration that should have been reported at a sensor versus what was actually seen. So a sort of reactive maintenance program based on using modelling as the benchmarking which I found pretty interesting. Yeah, that's basically becoming increasingly common where we have these low-cost distributed networks who effectively run algorithms across them and they're not necessarily sophisticated, but what they do is they look at the variation in concentrations between instruments and also within an instrument. And where there is a change you can often identify or associate it either with an instrument or an instrumental issue, an environmental issue or in some cases a change in emissions. So the data itself can be really useful for basically drilling down and saying, oh yeah, the situation's changed, the pattern's changed, and then looking into what that may be. So in some cases, often with these sensors they do align very strongly with reference analysers and it's great that that occurs, but the value really comes in in figuring out what's going on in behind the scenes. One thing's for sure, like we used to think we didn't need to have smoke monitoring, but after the bushfire, what we had, it's becoming more important. Do you have a new monitoring of smoke in vineyards and vineyard areas? I know that there's a huge amount of damage and loss of crop because of our smoke tainted grapes up in our, up around Wendor-Ratter and areas like that. Have you been involved with that at all? Yeah, we have a bit. We found that, I think a couple of years back when you guys had those last substantial wood fires, you're kind enough to send a lot of that smoke our way. And around three or four days later, we got hit by it. So yeah, we had quite a bit of, it was around November, December from memory. So a number of our crops were, it's fairly early in our season, but a number of our crops were adversely affected and we did get involved in monitoring. Around that time, the grapes a little bit early for the grapes, but we did have quite a few of our stone fruit, our cherries, and there was a big concern around tainting mainly for our export crops. So we got involved in that and we're able to provide some useful assistance to some of those orchidists. Because it's really important if they can be warned early, they can cut crops because they know they're going to rot off their crop, you know. So it's, it's, it's a value. So I might catch up with you after about this. I've just noticed that there's three new Q&As. So I better have a quick look at that. Simon Fremlett, they currently use disables 12.5 Hertz to 20 kilohertz, even for vibration slash LFE complaint monitoring. I might catch up with you afterwards, Simon, to get a bit more detail on that. I can circulate that out to the group. Another one from Peter Richardson. Do you know when new garden stocks on source air pollution monitoring for regulatory purposes will be published? A very good question. So I'm only going, what I was told sort of yesterday by EPA is that they're obviously splitting what was one document into two. And now there's the, you've got the one we've just gone through. And then you've got a separate one for the point source. So I'm not sure if they're progressing at the same speed or not, but I will check and come back to you. I'll have to speak to the EPA and check in on that, but they will be able to tell me. One point source. One thing's for sure. There's a lot of new guidance and it takes a bit to get through it all. Okay. Well, we're about five minutes over our time frame. I think we've been through all the questions. Look, thanks very much for your attendance today. We had a really great turnout and Paul, it's a credit to you that we had so many here today. So thank you very much. And it's really a pleasure to have a true specialist on a webinar series talking about air quality monitoring. If you'd like to get in touch with Paul and myself, just shoot me an email and I will connect you up. But thank you very much for attending today. Really appreciate your attendance and your questions. Thanks very much and thanks Paul. Thank you, Richard. All the best, everyone. Bye.