Can I use olfactometry to measure odour in ambient air (e.g. to assess compliance to an annoyance criteria)?
No. Olfactometry is not a suitable technique to determine compliance to an annoyance criteria by sampling ambient odours for the following reasons: – It is not possible to determine compliance to criteria that consider the contribution of odours from the site in question only by collection of ambient olfactometry samples at the boundary or off-site. This is due to the fact that odour measurement by olfactometry does not differentiate between odour sources, it merely provides a measurement of the odour concentration of the air at the point of collection. In an urban or rural environment, the ambient air is likely to have a background concentration of between 10 and 100 ouE/m3, which is due to the sum of all contributing sources of odour in the area (e.g. traffic, agricultural activities, natural odours associated with woodland and grassland, other industrial sources etc). It is therefore technically impossible to identify whether a 2 ouE/m3 process odour condition has been achieved or b
