Continual exposure to these hazardous gases can cause stress, loss of appetite, and even death. Various acute and chronic diseases, including but not limited to contagious respiratory diseases, can be initiated by exposure to air pollutants or aggravated by them. Such gaseous and particulate stressors on confined animals can lead to increased production costs to farmers. Higher veterinary costs, higher mortality throughout the production cycle, decreased feed efficiency, more days to raise a market animal to the target weight for slaughter, and lower quality carcasses delivered to the packer are all production costs that are passed onto the consumer. Monitoring of such atmospheres should detect whether or not hazardous gases exist, what hazardous gases exist, at what levels they exist, and whether there is adequate oxygen.
Different locations require different types of gas detection instruments and different precautions.
One instrument that is capable of detecting several different gases in multiple farm environments make the most sense for farm production workers. Solid-state sensors are potential solutions to identifying and monitoring hazardous atmospheres. From what is known of sensor systems today, personal gas protection multi-gas monitors capable of monitoring continuously for several different gases are the detection instrument of choice, and they are already available commercially. The caveat to this seemingly ready made solution is that these sensors and monitoring instruments have been developed for use in other fields. While they hold promise for use in agricultural hazardous atmospheres, the have not be tested for such a purpose.