After the occurrences of the dispute involving air pollution at Dafa Industrial Park, which affected the health of teachers and students, and air pollution incidents caused by accidents at the Formosa Plastics plant, the Environmental Protection Administration issued the Standard Operation Practices for Air Pollution Emergency Response . These regulations are designed to strengthen county and city environmental protection agencies’ abilities to deal with air pollution accidents within their jurisdictions, and thus reduce danger and damage to the people and the environment as a result of air pollution accidents.This project completed the review and revision of the Standard Practices for Air Pollution Emergency Response in accordance with the Regulations Governing Air Pollution Emergency Response Plans and Warning Notification Procedures, and completed updates of the list of central- and local-authority emergency contact persons, as well as the related communication tests. In order to improve local authorities’ emergency response procedures and implementation capacity with regard to air pollution accidents, personnel were sent to participate in emergency drills conducted by five counties/cities. This participation was analyzed to provide suggestions regarding strengths and weaknesses in implementation. In addition, review of the Air Pollution Emergency Response Plan reference guide was also conducted and completed, the result of which was sent to all local environmental protection agencies on February 15, 2020. Moreover, three information meeting and training sessions were conducted for each of the above-mentioned tasks to strengthen related central- and local-authority response personnel’s concepts of and capacity in handling air pollution emergencies.
According to the investigation of odor nuisance sources on the campus of Shu-ling Primary School in Taoyuan Guanyin Industrial Zone, the frequency of "sour odor" on campus and the concentration of related odor pollutants such as methyl acetate and acetic acid decreased by more than 90％. The odor was described as "fishy smell" derived from N,N-dimethylformamide used as PU resin solvent in the PU synthetic leather process, accompanied by methyl ethyl ketone and toluene in campus measurements. The source of the fishy smell pointed to the polyurethane coating plant two kilometers southwest of the school. Further investigation revealed that the discharge of "fishy smell" and related pollutants from the PU coating plant in the southwest was mainly caused by insufficient abatement efficiency of the air pollution control system. The company plans to introduce organic solvent-free PU coating process and move the whole plant to Yun-ling science based park in 2021. The results of odor nuisance investigation in Xi-zhou primary school of Yun-ling county showed that the main air pollutants came from factories in the west to southwest directions. Odorants include compounds commonly used as organic solvent in surface coating processes. These organic compounds were mainly contributed by a gravure printing company located in 2.5 kilometers west of the school. The printing company used wet scrubber which is inadequate to treat organic solvent emission. The company is now in the process of evaluating more effective air pollution control system to replace the wet scrubber. The monitoring results in Ren-da industrial park revealed significant decrease in concentration of major air pollutants such as hydrogen cyanide, N,N-dimethylformamide, cyclohexane and 1,3-butadiene when compared with measured results of 2003 monitoring campaign. However, concentration of vinyl acetate, vinyl chloride, ethyl acetate and methanol increased significantly compared with 2003 measurements. Vinyl acetate mainly came from the EVA plant on the south side of Da-sher industrial park. 1,3-butadiene was contributed partially by the ABS plant in Da-sher industrial park and partially by a new process of EVA plant. Ethyl acetate and methanol were widely used in surface coating processes, which were difficult to identify the emission sources. As for vinyl chloride, being detected along with propylene and propane at the same time during the monitoring campaign mainly came from the epichlorohydrin manufacturing plant located in the west southwest of OP-FTIR path. Furthermore, a guide map of major odor pollution sources was established, which summarized the historical data derived from the odor nuisance investigation of this project.
