Construction Dust Monitoring: Assessing Dust Emission Magnitude

Assessing the risk of breaching dust emissions limits

Fugitive dust emissions from construction sites are known to have an impact on the local air quality and ecology. This can lead to complaints from the public as well as increasing the risk of breaching emission limit values set by the UK government.

A diligent pre-construction planning team will recognise these risks and anticipate the types of assessments needed to support a successful application. One of these will be a dust risk assessment. This is typically carried out in accordance with industry guidance from the Institute of Air Quality Management or IAQM.

A screening assessment will determine if there are any sensitive human or ecological receptors within a certain radius of the proposed site. In most cases, a further, more detailed assessment is required due to the size of the radius which invariably includes a receptor that is impacted in some way.

Dust assessment breakdown

The detailed assessment can be split into the following categories:

1. Dust Emission Magnitude
2. Sensitivity of Local Receptors

The DEM is broken out into 4 construction phases; Demolition, Earthworks, Construction and Trackout. These phases are assessed based on the following criteria:

• m³ of the existing structure to be demolished and its height
• m² of the site to be cleared and the soil type
• m³ of the infrastructure/building and the method used to construct it
• # of vehicle movements to and from the site and the distance travelled over unpaved surfaces 

Based on the tables in the IAQM guidance, each phase can simply be catergorised as having a large, medium or small DEM impact. See page 14 of the IAQM guidance.

Read Part 2 of the 3-part Construction Dust Monitoring Series to be published Thursday, 22 July.

Additional resources

• Beware of Air Quality Regulation, Construction Manager Magazine
• Real-time dust monitoring data you can trust

About the author

Myles Quigley is a product manager at TSI for environmental and exposure monitoring. Since joining the company in 2018, he has worked closely with both industry and government to understand the legislation and customer requirements that drive this space. Prior to joining TSI, he worked as a Global Product Manager in various industries such as building automation and renewable energy. Myles started his career as a graduate Building Services Engineer before making his move into product management fifteen years ago. During this time, he has worked with numerous universities and research institutes, including KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm and Dresden University of Technology, and many more.