Hopefully most readers are aware the management of the Lafarge cement works in Westbury is currently pursuing an application to trial burning of recycled liquid fuels in its kilns.

This application is now open to public scrutiny with a deadline for comments of July 29. The application to the Environment Agency is under reference EA/PPC/BV0775.

Carrol Hodgson is the permit administrator dealing with the case available on carrol.hodgson@environment-agency.gov.uk telephone 01278 484 649.

I intend making a personal submission to the Environment Agency. I feel that the output from the factory is neither sufficiently filtered nor monitored.

For example, I understand that during the trials that brought about the approval to burn tyres the only monitoring that did occur was at a single station at Bratton. This, I'm told, against the Environment Agency's own recommendation of monitoring at least eight points of the compass.

I understand there is a system that will continuously monitor both dioxins and furans (The Absorption Method for Sampling of Dioxins and Furans AMESA) and that the Environment Agency is trialling this system at a Nottingham plant.

As it is the small particulate matter and dioxins alongside furans that present the major health concern of any emissions from the plant, a key demand in my submission will be that the AMESA system be fitted to the plant as a matter of urgency.

My concerns over the safety of the plant were raised on a visit I made to the works. I saw that the tyre feed to the two kilns happens by way of a door opening on the top of the revolution and the tyres dropping in the doors being open for perhaps as much as a quarter of a revolution.

I saw black smoke venting to the atmosphere through cut outs in the roof of the kiln building. Mindful that each kiln turns at a revolution of one and a half times a minute and that together they take five tyres a revolution it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that notwithstanding the huge heat of the kiln, cold tyres dropping into it are going to create toxic smoke and that, happening on the frequency I have described, amounts to a potential high unfiltered bleed of toxic smoke to the atmosphere.

I have reported this to the Environment Agency and have been assured it is investigating the situation.

I'm sure most people would agree it's great annually ten per cent of the UK tyres to waste are being disposed of by saving fossil fuels but this must not happen unless the procedure is sufficiently safe to protect the environment and community's health.

Mindful that the prevailing wind blows in this direction, surely Devizes is the first landfall for any toxic substances that come this way and we must be assured of absolute safety of both the way the factory currently works and for the way it works in the future.

Geoff Brewer

Downlands Road, Devizes