Smoking without fine dust
The Paris Agreement and people's health are much more interlinked than most think. Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are not only relevant to climate. Air pollutants, especially particulate matter emissions, which are particularly harmful, have major health implications. The Corona crisis has brought this back into public focus. According to current climate models, the number of victims is much higher than previously assumed. An estimated 8.7 million people died prematurely from emissions in 2019. By about 2040, 16,000 premature deaths could be avoided in Germany alone by meeting the climate target.
Conventional smokehouses also still emit too many emissions despite legally required air pollution control technologies. The combustion processes produce smoke, ash and fine dust particles that are considered more or less harmful to health. In contrast, smokehouses that use CleanSmoke technology easily comply with all air pollutant limits under the German Clean Air Act (TA Luft). Analyses carried out as part of the European Eco-innovation Action Plan (EcoAP) showed that CleanSmoke can reduce particulate matter by 87 percent and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by 64 percent, for example.
EU strongly endorses CleanSmoke
For years, the European Union (EU) has been requiring the manufacturing industry to use only environmentally friendly processing technologies. It therefore strongly endorses the use of primary smoke products, as these are considered less harmful to health than the traditional smoking process due to their fractionation and purification from undesirable substances (EU Regulation 2065/2003). This is one of the reasons why the EU has labeled the CleanSmoke process as "Best Available Technique" (BAT).
CleanSmoke is smoke freshly produced from primary smoke condensate by means of compressed air. These primary smoke products are cleaned of undesirable substances such as ash, soot, tar and PAHs in a multi-stage filter process. When smoking with CleanSmoke, there is no open fire or embers, which is why no pollutants such as fine dust, nitrogen oxides or carbon monoxide are produced. "For conventionally smoking businesses in areas with residential development, this is like life insurance," says Uwe Vogel, chairman of the CleanSmoke Coalition (CSC). "They would otherwise be threatened with closure or have to retrofit their operations at great technical expense."
But it is not only in the smokehouses that air pollution can be reduced: the consistent use of CleanSmoke also ensures fewer traffic emissions, since neither wood has to be delivered nor ash removed. Delivery of smoke condensates has to take place comparatively less frequently. Food smoked with CleanSmoke also contributes to health because no harmful substances from the smoke can pass into the products.
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