Application and Significance of Odour Measurement Techniques in Odour Pollution Control

摘要

Nuisance odours in urban areas have become an important issue for environmental authorities. Odour control regulations in Europe, USA, Australia and Hong Kong have been improving, however, those policies highly rely on odour measurement techniques and their standardization. Since the 1970 s olfactornetry, utilizing panels of human observers, has been developed as an environmental monitoring tool for the measurement of odours. This paper compared the three measurement techniques mostly used for odour related determination, including GC/MS, electronic nose and olfactornetry. It has been indicated that the recent advance in olfactornetry ensures the results with a sufficient level of accuracy, repeatability and reproducibility to be used by environmental authorities for the prediction of commu-nity odour impacts. Given adequate equipment design and operating procedures, panel selection/ management are critical to the outcome, and any further advances in the state of the art most likely to be in this area. The forced choice dynamic olfactornetry is widely accepted, but a practical internationally accepted standard for olfactornetry will not be attained until testing results are 'anchored' to a standard reference material. The recent progress of olfactornetry standardization in Europe and Australia has been reviewed and the recent practice for odour control in Hong Kong is a addressed. It is clear that any progress in odour control policy from a 'no nuisance" approach to a quantitative regulation needs a sound odour monitoring procedure with an acceptable compatibility between the odour police and measure- ments. However, since there is a significant difference of regulatory requirements in different countries now, some simpler and less expensive olfactometers may be acceptable for local use only with their limitation that are well under-stood.