Olores.org wishes you a merry Christmas and a very happy new year. We see each other soon in March in Santiago, Chile. Meanwhile, enjoy this time with your family and friends.
This time, we would like to thank to the companies that advertise in this site, they make possible that this portal exists.
We would like to thank one more year to LABAQUA/AQUALOGY. They have been supporting olores.org from the very beginning and their trust along these years has made this website happen. Thank you!
We would also like to express our gratitude to ECOMÉTRIKA who have been there also in the last 4 years. This time we are organising a conference in Chile next year together with them.
Last but not least, we would like to thank to ODOURNET, for trusting the work done in this website and for all the support shown in all the events organized by olores.org.
This year we have been in the last conference of the IWA in San Francisco. We got the opportunity of meeting the old colleagues and some new people who have been very inspiring.
Here you can see some of the videos we took in the conference. Check on our youtube channel for more videos in our channel.
| IWA conference personal olfactometer Scentroid SM100 | Odowatch at the 5th IWA Odour and Air Emissions Conference 2013 |
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Among all the interesting people that we met in San Francisco, this time we would like to mention to Jennifer Barclay. She has been a source of inspiration and a help many times and has been the point in common and reference to meet Joe Scire, another excellent person, with the modesty of the geniuses and the professionalism of a hard worker.
Together we have organized the first CALPUFF and Odors Training Course ever organized. This course took place in Madrid in October 2013 and it was great to learn from these two professionals.
This year 2013 we saw the launch of the new Odor-GIS™ platform developed by the people of St Croix Sensory Inc. This platform is similar to the platform ODOURMAP released last year by Odournet based in the VDI 3940 norm. The Odor-GIS™ is a member subscription, web-based application electronic repository whose database stores the odor inspection data and graphically displays the odor data on Google Maps® and Google Earth®. The Odor-GIS™ is not primary based on the VDI 3940 Norm.
Legislative approaches
In the part of legislation this year 2013 we had a sad story and a nice one.
In August 2013 the Air Quality Division of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) of the State of Oregon released the "Odor Nuisance Strategy Report" based on the so-called "Nuisance Factors" which are the tools used by the Environmental officers to deal with odour complaints. To evaluate "odors", the DEQ recommends the use of odour intensity scales to document qualities such as the frequency, duration, strength and offensiveness of an odour. The sad history here, is that there is no mention to dynamic olfactometry in the whole document. Therefore the people of Oregon will have to rely on the "opinion" of an environmental officer with no uncertainty or standard deviation so far and they will not have the chance of any repeatable and reproducible way of measuring odours.
On the other hand the people of Colombia have a new legislation related with odour management. The Resolution 1541 of 2013 approved by the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development establishes the admissible levels for air quality and ambient air and the procedure for activities potentially producers of odour complaints. And this is the happy story as this Norm do rely on a repeatable and reproducible way of measuring odours named Dynamic Olfactometry.
In August of 2013 we also got the second draft of the BREF (Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document) on Intensive Rearing of Poultry and Pigs (IRPP). This BREF is very important in terms of odour management, just to mention that the word "odour" appears 487 times in this draft. We will be following the release of this BREF, expected to be in 2014.
What is next?
I must admit that I was a bit sceptical about the First International Seminar of Odours in the Environment in Chile, but with the valuable help of Daniela from the Ministry on Environment of Chile and the support of Patricio, Vania and her team from Ecometrika we got over 25 presentations. We are quite confident now that it will be a very successful event with the full support of the Ministry of Environment of Chile.
The I International Seminar of Odours in the Environment will be in March 2014 in Santiago, Chile will start the year for odour managers, but there are two more events for the coming 2014 organized by the WEF and the AIDIC.
Every two years, this conference organized by the Water Environmental Federation (WEF) brings together environmental professionals from around the world for a showcase on odours and air pollutants management. This time the WEF Odors and Air Pollutants Conference will take place in Miami, Florida from the 31st of May to the 3rd of June 2014.
Later in September, the NOSE2014. 4th International Conference on Environmental Odour Monitoring & Control will take place in Venice, Italy will gather more professionals in environmental odour management. The NOSE 2014 Conference is organized by AIDIC, the Italian Association of Chemical Engineering.
This time I would like to finish with the very nice video made by the people of odournet, For those of you who have been busy with the VDI3940, I think you would be familiar with this christmas tree ;-).
