Review on the Effect of Sampling Methods on Emission Factors Establishment and Health Impacts Due To Palm Oil Mill Emissions

Malaysia has enjoyed one of the least polluted urbanenvironments in Asia. The goal of achieving industrialcountry status by the year 2020 and the associated rapideconomic growth have started to costs in terms of industrial pollution and degradation of urban environment, which become more serious in recent years. Air pollution is among the major issues that has been affecting human health, agricultural crops, forest species, and ecosystems.Generally, palm oil mills in Malaysia use fiber and shell wastes as fuel source in boiler to produce steam and electricity for palm oil and kernel oil production processes.The fiber and shell generated by the mill alone can supply more than enough electricity to meet the energy demand for internal use. However pollutants emitted from boilers due to the combustion of biomass materials (fiber and shell) pose quite a significant health and environmental impact.Even though the utilization of palm wastes as fuel is economically efficient, the combustion releases hazardous pollutants i.e. particulate matters, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide. Eventually the impact of such emissions can be estimated much earlier, even before the development of new plant or expansion of existing plant with the aid of emission factors (EFs). A lot of works have been conducted in establishing EFs for various biomasses, but till date none has been done for palm oil. The objective of this study is to review the significance of sampling method on EFs establishment. The selection of sampling technique has major influence on the accuracy of the EFs established. In addition, health and environmental impacts due to palm oil mills emissions are also reviewed in this paper.