I just came back from the Florida Air and Waste Management Association www.flawma.org annual meeting in Captiva Island. As always, the presentations from fellow scientists and engineers were outstanding. We heard a lot of information on global warming and the reality is that the issue has become very political. As an air pollution scientist, I read the articles, look and the data and hear the arguments and this is the conclusion I seem to always come up with; we are in a geologic and climatic cyclic trend that we have seen many times before and will see again in the future. I also see politicians trying to push taxes on carbon dioxide emissions on power plants and other key industrial sectors. What a waste of money this will be an who do you think will bear the burden? The American tax payer and consumer, that’s who.
I agree that we need alternate forms of energy, such as renewal power. I think it’s a good idea that we try to reduce “products of combustion” such as CO2. But to rush full-steam-ahead and start a new tax because the politicians see this as a new “gold mine” is just plain wrong and not good for business or our industrial sector. We need to promote our industrial sector so we can build a strong economy. Did you know China is the number 1 emitter of CO2? Almost two time that of the USA.
Did you know that most of the environmental regulations and permits require some level of employee training? This training is either required by the Code of Federal Regulation (CFR) or by a permit condition under the “general duty clause”. For example, if you operate an air pollution control system, you are required to do initial training of your staff in the proper operation, maintenance and malfunction procedures of this device in accordance with the manufacturers” specifications.
Other required training includes generators of hazardous waste, transportation and shipping of any hazardous materials, stormwater pollution prevention, medical waste incinerator operators and blood borne pathogens just to name a few. Grove Scientific & Engineering Company can help you with your training needs.
The USEPA has been working on lowering the ambient air quality standard of Ozone from 75 ppb to somewhere between 65-70 ppb. If this happens, most of the counties in Florida will be affected. It will also, be bad news for certain industry and consumers. For many manufacturing industries, they will have to implement “Lowest Achievable Emission Rates” (LAER) which does not consider cost in the control process. I believe many businesses will choose to move production out of Florida and if possible out of the USA if this happens.
Lowering the ozone standard will affect consumers by raising fuel prices, mandatory vehicle inspections and higher prices of consumer goods. If it costs an industry more money to make a product, the cost will be passed on to the consumer. For more on this issue go to http://www.dep.state.fl.us/air/
