The General Office of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment ("MEE") has recently released the Atmospheric Pollutant Emission Standard for the Pesticide Industry (Draft for Comment) (the "Draft for Comment") to invite comments from the entities concerned by January 7, 2019.
The Draft for Comment sets out requirements for control over, monitoring of, and supervision and administration of, atmospheric pollutants discharged by the pesticide industry, and applies not only to the administration of the discharge of atmospheric pollutants by existing enterprises or production facilities in the pesticide industry, but also to the environmental impact assessment for construction projects intended for the pesticide industry, the design of their environmental protection facilities, acceptance inspections of these projects for the environmental protection purpose, issue of pollutant discharge permits, and administration of the discharge of atmospheric pollutants after these projects have been put into operation. For a pesticide enterprise that has exhaust gas emitted in a controlled way, the Draft for Comment states that this controlled emission will be subject to the maximum allowable concentration limit for pollutants from emission pipes. Meanwhile, this standard places control over the fugitive emission to reduce the creation of exhaust gas from source.