The "Historically Most Rigid' environment protection law in China has been released. The pesticide industry has always been the focus of society when it comes to environmental protection. The existing water pollution discharge standard for the pesticide industry was established in 2001, but with a rapid replacement rate of the pesticide products in recent years, organic chloride, carbamic acid ester and other pesticide varieties in the oldest 10 standards have been eliminated, so the standard must be revised.
A few days ago, sponsored by China Crop Protection Industry Association (CCPIA), the 3rd Seminar on HSE of China Pesticide Industry was held in Shanghai. This seminar opened up discussions with regard to the water pollution discharge standard and air pollution emission standard which are to be established soon. There is no doubt that the establishment of the two standards is favorable to elimination of backward production capacity, energy conservation and green production of the pesticide industry in China. However, there are still a lot of problems existing in the process of establishing the two standards; the most prominent issue lies in the difficulty of achieving a uniform emission standard, which exerts a lot of pressure on the pesticide enterprises.
Hu Linlin, Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Standards of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, expounded the main problems existing in the current water pollution discharge standard: the indirect emission limits are less-stringent, while the integrated wastewater discharge standard for COD is too stringent, coverage of particular pollutant indicators is not inadequate, and some indicators are remarkably obsolete due to yield change of pesticide varieties. Also there are following problems existing in current work: firstly, there is not any quantified result in the existing 10 standards in the pesticide industry; secondly, the supporting work for the monitoring methods requires improvement; thirdly, integrated toxicity index is not established; fourthly, the discharge and emission standards do not apply to indirect emissions from industrial parks; and fifthly, discharge standards for controlling pollutants in formulation products are not taken into consideration as a whole. Hu said the new standard will be open for comments by the end of this year, and go through administrative review procedures next year. It is expected that the new standards will officially take effect in 2017.
Liang Xingyin, Secretary-General of the Professional Committee of Technical Standards for Environmental Protection introduced the framework and requirements for the pesticide industry's atmospheric pollutant emission. He emphasized that the emission standard is established to control atmospheric pollutants emitted by the pesticide industry, reduce the emission of particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, odor gases, and toxic gas, and reduce the impact of haze weather on environment and human beings. Furthermore, it can optimize the industrial structure, promoting the survival of the fittest. The standard will cover atmospheric pollutants emitted from pesticide production (including production, storage, and packaging of TC, pesticide intermediates and formulations). A two years' transitional period will be given to the existing enterprises, while for new enterprises, their practice should follow strictly the standard. Currently data and information gathering, analysis, sampling, emission concentration inspection for pollutant emission standard are proceeding in an orderly way. It is expected that the Atmospheric Pollutant Emission Standard for the Pesticide Industry will be released by the end of 2014. .
Emission standard of air pollutants was first proposed in the Chinese pesticide industry; therefore, it has caught wide attention from the industry. Some industrial representatives indicated that the establishment of atmospheric pollutant emission standard is the inevitable trend. However, there are too many uncontrollable factors in collecting exhaust gas sample, so it is difficult to form a unified standard. In the meantime, the existing testing equipment and approaches are not sufficient to meet the new standards. Experts from the Ministry of Environmental Protection said that the standard setting would be based on the study of foreign standards. A majority of the Chinese enterprises will be invited to participate in the formulation of the standards. The purpose for establishing the standard is not to restrict the development of the pesticide enterprises, but rather to promote healthy and sustainable development of Chinas pesticide industry.