Chairman's Introduction

I have always advocated that the main driving force of the STA has always been, and always will be, the full membership and we would like to encourage all members to continue to contribute and help us shape the future of the Association going forward. The meetings continue to be a great forum for debate and decision making, and have always offered the opportunity for members to communicate directly with Regulators and UKAS, and to help influence key decisions in a variety of fields including input into shaping guidance and support for the industry.

We are aiming to continue to develop these to make them even more relevant and useful going forward. We are keen to adapt these to reflect the membership’s needs and desires going forward, so we welcome any suggestions to help us deliver this forum.

If you are not currently a member of the STA, I would like to encourage you to join in 2020 whether you are a Test Laboratory, a Process Operator, an Equipment Manufacturer or a Regulator. For a modest annual fee, your organisation will have the benefits of: free telephone advice; discounted training; keeping up to date and participating in the development of standards and regulatory guidance documents.

Understanding how standards numbers work

Figure 1 shows how standards are adopted in the UK and published by the British Standards Institute (BSI).

1. Should a standard be developed, for example in the UK by BSI it will be prefixed by BS, e.g. BS 3841-1:1994 Determination of smoke emission from manufactured solid fuels for domestic use.

2. When a standard is developed and published by CEN, it is prefixed with EN, and when introduced in the UK it will become a BS EN document, e.g. BS EN 1911:2010 Stationary source emissions – Determination of mass concentration of gaseous chlorides expressed as HCl and as stated above any conflicting standard must be removed. CEN or ISO can develop a standard under a joint agreement, and then CEN and ISO publish it with a prefix EN ISO, and in the UK it then becomes a BS EN ISO prefix, e.g. BS EN ISO 23210:2009 Stationary source emissions – Determination of PM10/PM2.5 mass concentration in the flue gas. A national foreword is added to the standard to indicate its scope of applicability and to highlight any UK specific concerns.

3. When ISO develops a standard it is prefixed ISO and should this be adopted in the UK it becomes BS ISO, e.g. BS ISO 25597:2015 Stationary source emissions – Test method for determining PM10/PM2.5 mass in stack gases using cyclone samplers and sample dilution.

Figure 1 Diagram of the world family of standards

STA Industry Guidance

The STA has been producing guidance in area relating to emission monitoring since 1995 the STA has created over 70 different guidance notes in the areas of Health and Safety, Quality, Technical and Analysis, all guidance notes are available to be downloaded and used by STA members.