Havens noted that large confined animal operations have not shown up in the PM 10 monitoring to date. Havens suggested that it would be interesting to conduct a study of the relationship between odor and PM 2.5, and encouraged the agricultural community to work with the Department on that issue. Steve Crawford, House, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, questioned the relationship between odor and air quality. Havens stated that odor may indicate that a control device has broken down and a pollutant may be released which may cause health problems. An example would be a bakery whose emissions would form ozone, but rarely do people complain about the smell of bread.
Odors can at times indicate that there is a problem.
The public law behind odor problems is nuisance which is difficult to monitor. Havens noted that the standards allow for a 24 hour exceedance such as a structure fire being picked up by a monitor which would influence the data. Bob Junk, PA Farmers Union, expressed concern over the operation of diesel tractors and their effect on the monitors. Havens stated that diesel emissions will have an impact on the monitoring but a diesel tractor would probably not show up in the monitoring as opposed to a fleet of city buses which would. Curtis Kratz, Moyer Packing Company, noted that most agricultural products are moved by diesel motors and questioned what effect this standard will have on that.