Prince George, B.C. - Although 15 air samples taken in Prince George since last May have failed to produce any detectable levels of formaldehyde, the sampling will continue.

“We are committed to the community to carry on the sampling” says Dean Cherkas, Regional Manager of the Environment Protection Division of the Ministry of the Environment.

Cherkas says it makes sense to carry on with sampling to make certain the numbers produced in the summer of 2008 were in fact an error.  “The community deserves that, especially those in the Millar Addition, deserve to know what the heck was going on with those (2008) results.”

The samples in the summer of 2008 produced results which indicated horrendous levels of formaldehyde. The sampling which started last May, has failed to duplicate those figures.

The Ministry of Environment was given $20 thousand dollars to carry out 54 samples over the course of the fiscal year.  

“It was definitely a public health issue with those kinds of numbers. We were justified in doing our quality assurance quality control piece that we as Ministry officials are supposed to be doing, that’s our job. That’s not going to change. There’s going to be more sampling down the road. In fact we do have several sampling areas for particulate sampling which is on going, year in year out.”