BRIGG PONG: DID YOU SMELL IT?

If you were out and about in Brigg early yesterday morning (Wednesday), or had your windows open, you might have noticed an unpleasant pong in the air.
You could smell it on the St Helen's Road housing estate and within the town centre.
However, by 9am it had disappeared - at least in our area.
We checked North Lincolnshire Council's online air quality register for the district and the level of pollution was classed as low. 
The authority  measures dust particles rather than smells but we wondered whether the issue in Brigg might be a bit of smog that had drifted across.
A check  later with North Lincolnshire Council revealed no complaints logged by the public with environmental staff about bad smells in Brigg.
The council has air quality monitoring stations in Scunthorpe, Killingholme (east of the district) and South Ferriby (serving the Barton area).
Bottesford and Ashby are very close to Scunthorpe and so enjoy the advantages of having their air quality monitored. However, Brigg and the Isle of Axholme do not have stations. 
A spokesman North Lincolnshire Council explained: "The reason that Scunthorpe, S. Ferriby and Killingholme have air quality monitoring stations is due to the presence is these areas of heavy industry. 
"These stations look for specific air particulates that wouldn't be present in the Isle or Brigg due to the lack of those kinds of industrial processes.

"We do undertake Nitrogen Dioxide monitoring (the principle source of this pollutant is traffic emissions) throughout the county, including at Brigg and in the Isle. The technique used involves monthly exposure and subsequent laboratory analysis, so is not real-time monitoring. This would not pick up odours, either."
Long-standing Brigg residents will remember the distinctive smell in the air for lengthy periods when the dear old sugar factory was still going strong with its beet processing. 
Spring's jam factory, which closed in the 1970s, also had smell of its own.