Air quality testing devices purchased by the ACT Government were never designed to be used in emergency situations.
In 2005, following advice from the Environment Commissioner, the ACT Government purchased three air monitoring devices at a cost of $100,000.
However, an ACT Health spokeswoman said these devices were only intended to test for wood smoke and fine particles in the air.
''The air monitoring devices in question are designed to monitor for particulate matter only and are currently used in the wood-smoke/particulate matter part of the ambient air monitoring network,'' she said.
''The devices in question are not readily deployable for monitoring an emergency situation and would only provide information of particulate concentrations.''
Environment Minister Simon Corbell said the ACT did not have any mobile monitoring devices that could be used in emergency situations, aside from those owned by the fire brigade. He said the Government's air testing equipment was used in stationary monitoring sites in Civic and Monash.
''The air quality testing that is done at stations is for the purpose of measuring whether or not we are within the tolerances for national environment protection measures, and they only test for three things,'' he said.
''They don't test for one-off events like industrial fires and it's wrong to conflate the two because they are not relevant to each another. The fire brigades use devices that determine whether there is any immediate safety risk.''
The devices only measure carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and microscopic particulate matter.
He said the ACT Government did not have plans to purchase mobile air testing devices that could be used in emergency situations.
However, he said this could change following the outcome of a review into the Mitchell fire.
The large blaze destroyed almost 420,000lt of oil at the Energy Services Invironmental hazardous waste treatment plant.
The ACT Fire Brigade tested for oxygen levels, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulphide, phosgene, volatile organic compounds and explosive limits. However, experts have raised concerns about a lack of information on highly toxic dioxins emitted during the fire.
The ACT Government is investigating the possibility of a new air monitoring station that meets national guidelines.
No decisions have been made about where an additional station would be located.
There are currently three monitoring stations in the ACT - Civic, Monash and Belconnen.
The station in Belconnen only measures particulate matter and the Civic station does not meet national standards as it is too close to traffic.
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