Respiratory responses of human subjects to air quality in a swine building.

Posted in: Environment by admin on January 1, 1997 | No Comments

The purpose of this study is to test the following hypotheses: (1) if air quality control strategy can be directly evaluated by measuring respiratory responses in swine building environments. Twenty naA?ve human subjects (subjects were between 18 and 35 years old and had never been exposed to an enclosed swine environment before) were exposed to two different air qualities, a treatment and a control, in a swine building. The treatment room was sprinkled with crude canola oil, which reduced the dust, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide by 93%, 30% and 27%, respectively, compared with the control. Each subject spent five hours in each room. They were scheduled to do a bicycle exercise that was intended to simulate the barn workersa

Reduction of Ammonia Volatilization by Housing and Feeding in Fattening Piggeries

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Appropriate pen design where less than 50% of the floor surface is slatted combined to a good control of the indoor conditions (particularly in the summer to prevent pen fouling) can reduce the ammonia emission and also improve animal welfare.

Effect of C Source on Bedding and Compost N Volatilization

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N losses are taken as a whole making no difference between ammonia emission and NO and N2O emissions. The composting process when not well controlled, can results in NO and N2O emissions. No information is given on the temperature of the compost during the process even if thermocouples were installed to measure it. No information is also given to the composting process under winter conditions where the degradation processes are slowed by the low temperature and the slowing down of bacteria activity.

County votes down corporate hog farms

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The Seaboard Corp. tries to complete an integrated project around a hog plant located in Guymon Okla., that could increase its slaughter capacity from 14 000 head /day to 16 000 head. This project is tied to swine production units in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. Last spring, Seaboard Corp. acquired real estate (in Kansas and just across the border in Oklahoma) and informed the official of Seward County, Kansas of their plan for pork production units and a feed mill building project. However, Seward County controversy and the opposition toward corporate pork production it has arisen in other states that had previously supported corporate farming threaten the project. A vote was taken in Seward County and an overwhelming majority of citizen want to rescind corporate farming. The legality of this vote is questioned and the Kansas attorney general concluded that the vote is non-binding because the citizens are not specifically authorized by the law to rescind corporate farming while county commissioners can. However legal advisors of the county commission has interpreted the home-rule authority differently and consider the vote binding. The county commission may have to vote and the commissioners who supported the Seaboard Corp. are under severe pressure.
Disputes over corporate farming are happening on many other Kansas counties even if some of them had endorsed corporate farming in the past (particularly with Murphy Farms in Hodgeman County over a 10 000-sow facility). The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) has environmental standards but the counties (as allowed by the law) can create more restrictive ones.
The Kansas Pork Producers Council is afraid the counties may start treating farms differently and that expansion may become difficult if county and state regulations become excessive.
The opponents are concerned with the important number of hogs (500 000) that would be put in Seward County and the impact it can have on the environment, property value and the influx of low-wage, immigrant labor it could bring. They consider that the tax revenue from those operations would not outbalance the negative impact on the county and that the existing KDHE’s policy on waste regulation is inadequate.

The disputes are severe and could have an impact on all the pork production in that state because the line between pork corporate farming and pork production is thin (today’s corporate production units size could become tomorrow farmers production size). Links between concentrated production and environmental rules are not outlined. Some dairy farmers are taking position against corporate farming.

Hogs Your Way – Self Guiding Decision Support System for Producers Evaluating Hog Production Systems

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The development of a set of criteria was done by a large and interdisciplinary group from the hog industry in order to evaluate 3 alternative hog production system. The systems evaluated were: the Swedish Deep Straw Farrowing System (Vastgotmodellen), Pasture Systems for farrowing and finishing and for the finishing and farrowing stages, the Hoop Houses using straw. Those systems were found to be economically interesting for specific size production units (beginning, small and medium sized farms) and they could lower certain environmental impacts compared to conventional production units on liquid manure systems. A guide has been develop to assist the producers that want to start swine production or change their production system. This guide integrate to the decision making process the specific vision of the producer, his vision and goals for his farm and family and the elements of the different production systems.

Such type of decision support system should be done to help farmers with the choice of “environmental friendly” production systems for integration in the actual farm or when planning new buildings. Different systems with consideration of odours, gas emissions, risk to soil and water are available. To decide which are the most appropriate and cost effective for a given farm or situation is difficult with no help. The tool that have been developed does not cover all environmental aspects, particularly for gas emissions.

Temperature effect in Concrete Manure Tanks: Finite Element Approach.

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The study realized shows that the temperature differential in the concrete walls of the manure storage has an important effect and should be considered in the structural design of the tank. Measures were taken on an instrumented manure concrete tank and a mathematical model using the finite element technique was developed to better understand the thermal phenomena. A suggested procedures is given to allow for the determination of the design internal forces that consider all thermal effects.

As more research is done on the concrete tanks, more parameters are found to have an effect on the tank structure. These effects can than be integrated in the design calculation for the structure resulting in storage facilities that are more solid and would have a longer lifetime.

Low-phytate corn may decrease phosphorus

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Pioneer Hi-Bred International and USDA are working to develop low-phytate corn after following the work on genes realised by Victor Raboy from USDA Aberdeen, ID. More than 20 mutations on corn, and others in rice and barley have been made to reduce the amount of phosphorus stored in the plant as phytic acid. The most promising mutant reduce the phytic acid by 2/3 with no reduction in the phosphorus content and up to now no problems have been found with the seeds. A research project is also conducted at the University of Minnesota on the management and culture of the low-phytate corn. Corn with more available phosphorus would reduce the phosphorus in the manure. Researchers hope that the phosphorus content of the manure obtained from pigs fed those hybrids could lowered from 30lb./1000gal. to 16lb./1000 gal.
According to the Pioneer officials, the low-phytic acid corn hybrid could be ready for commercial production in 2 to 3 years.

These changes in the phosphorus availability in plants are very interesting because the nutrients control is higher in the feeding chain. The yield obtained and cost of the seed should however be consider compare to phytase.

Livestock Odor Measurement using a Venturi Olfactometer and Odor Sampling using Cloth Swatches

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C. McGinley designed a venturi olfactometer that consists in a single presentation port to the panelist supplied by a solenoid and orifice system that control the air flow from the clean air supply and from the odorous sample. Tests of this design were done at the University of Minnesota over a period of three months and the venturi olfactometer proved his reliability and repeatability for dilution of 10.5 to 5793. This design presents many advantages which are: the very short distance between the mixing of the odorous sample and the fresh air and the presentation port, the purging time is short between the change of samples, the required odorous air mix to realize the sample testing is small, less residual contamination, and less time between dilution steps. Odor sampling with cloth swatch was also tested as a mean to transport the odors to the olfactometer. Cloth swatches were suspended (at 1,5 m from the slatted floor) in a finishing building for 8 hours and a pulsed air pump set to collect the air at the same level for the same period and store it in a Tedlar bag was also installed. Olfactometry analysis was then done on the cloth swatches and the air samples to compare both techniques. The results showed that for odor levels that are very low some correlation may exists between both techniques however, for medium to high odor concentrations no correlation could not be done.

The venturi olfactometer seems to be interesting considering its advantages. It would also be interesting to verify if the results obtained with this equipment are repeatable from one venturi olfactometer to another because apparently, the tests were done on the same olfactometer. The cloth swatch technique should not be used for odor intensity testing.

Odor Removal Using Biomass Filters

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In this publication, results are presented for a biomass filters made of cornstalks and corncobs as substrate. See the publication in the “Other notes” for more complete comments. More investigation is needed to understand the periodic odor release that occurred.
The experiment was also supposed to test a compost biofilter which technology was abandoned after few weeks trial due to the very high energy cost associated with the fan requirements and the high static pressure across the filter, the chosen design proved to be inappropriate.
More work is needed to better understand the relationship between dust concentration and associated odor components and also to find better filter media that is effective in dust and odor removal but show little airflow resistance considering the important air volumes that have to be treated from ventilated livestock buildings.

Odor Emission from Traditional and Low-emitting Swine Housing Systems: Emission Levels and their Accuracy

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The content of this publication is relatively similar to the following:
Evaluation of a Standard Sampling Method for Determination of Odour Emission from Animal Housing Systems and Calibration of the Dutch Pig Odour Unit into Standardized Odour Units.1997. Ogink, N.W.M. and J.V. Klarenbeek.
See the comments given.