Odour team to beat nasty niffs – by a nose

Date: 05/06/03

By Peter Chapman

FIRST came the European currency unit (ECU), the forerunner to the euro.

Now, EU odour experts at the European Standardisation Committee are celebrating the launch of their own 'single currency' - the 'European Odour Unit' - to help rank smells in order of nastiness.

Ton van Harreveld, chief executive of Odournet, a group of 'odour management' companies leading the project, told European Voice the breakthrough would help citizens fight back against nasty smells which can make their daily lives a misery.

"You can ruin people's lives with odour - it is in the same category as dust and noise - but regulations are far less established than they are for noise pollution," he said, adding that a key problem has been the difficulty in measuring just how bad a smell is.

The new norm, he explained, would help citizens to battle nasty smells because it would arm local authorities - usually the first port of call for complaints - with the accurate data they would need to take legal action against the perpetrators.

The system works by using a base level of a pungent chemical 'n-butanol' - known as the 'European Reference Odour Mass'.

This level was defined as the border line of detectability by a specially trained panel of 'smellers'.

Similarly trained panellists can then compare samples of any nasty niff against this 'gold standard' - for example an air sample around a chemical plant.

The number of times it has to be diluted to reach the same intensity as the European Reference Odour Mass is then used to calculate the number of European Odour Unit's per square metre.

The panellists, of course, need excellent noses.

But the high concentration levels required mean the smellers can only endure a few four-hour shifts per week, making it an excellent part-time job for students and housewives.

Harreveld, one of the EU's biggest smell experts, said pig manure - a particular gripe for the Dutch and Irish - and sewage plants caused the most offence to EU nostrils.

"Pigs don't have loos," said Harreveld, explaining that swine defecate on special grids built into the floor of their pens to avoid a build up of mess.

When these grids are blasted clean with compressed air, "it smells a lot", he added.

Harreveld said human bodies are conditioned to be ultra-sensitive when it comes to aromas because their survival has depended on it. "Our innate reaction to smells we don't like is negative. That is because people with an overly positive reaction during millions of years of evolution did not make it."

And although almost anything can upset the nostrils if it is too pungent, from a frites factory to a brewery, he says there are a number of 'golden rules'.

"Excrement, dead bodies or anything sulphurous are considered to be unpleasant."