This article presents the results of training, selection and control of a group of assessors to determine the odour threshold. General recommendations of the European standard EN 13725: 2003 “Air quality － Determination of odour concentration by dynamic olfactometry” for the training, selection and supervision of a group of assessors were used in this work. A trained assessor team or panel is the odour measuring instrument. The dynamic olfactometry method was used to determine the concentration of odour in a gas sample. N-butanol was chosen as the odour sample. The experimental setup for the selection and training of a group of assessors to determine the odour threshold is a information measuring system. This information measuring system provides high accuracy and reliability of measurements. The authors chose the Scentroid SM 100 olfactometer and the Agilent 7800 A gas chromatography-mass spectrometer with a 5975C mass-selective detector as a mean of measuring in information system. The referenced value of odour threshold for n-butanol was set to 38 ppb for a panel of 8 selected n-butanol assessors. The number of steps in the dilution series was 6. The instrumental dilution range was 11 ppb to 145 ppb.

This article is devoted to the measurement of formaldehyde emissions from furniture materials in the classes of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University and kindergartens. An important task of society is to preserve the health of children and students, since they spend a large amount of time in public buildings. The safety of indoor air depends from the materials of which the finishing materials and furniture are made. Formaldehyde is a priority hazardous substance released into the air of confined spaces. Studies were conducted not only for the amount of formaldehyde in the air in the room, but also for the materials from which the furniture was made. Small-sized installation was made for sampling formaldehyde emissions from furniture materials. These emissions were investigated by the photometric method with acetyl acetone reagent. The installation can be used to study the emissions parameters of other components that can be separated from finishing materials and furniture.

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Nowadays the problem of greenhouse gases emission going in the Earth's atmosphere is closely connected with greenhouse effect development. Natural sources of the gases are the main reason of that. They are exactly hydroelectric reservoirs of hydroelectric power plants because the process of methane and carbon dioxide emission moved by the decomposition of the bottom organic substances is still not learned at all. Our main goal is to simulate this process in the laboratory for conducting further experiments at the hydroelectric reservoirs. The floating gas box method is the key point of all the experiment. It allows us to calculate the concentration of the gases emitted in the above-water part of the gas box and determine what kind of equipment we should take to measure the same parameter of the gases at the the hydroelectric reservoirs. If the experiment at the the hydroelectric reservoir goes right and the laboratory results correspond to the original results it will be possible to use the data for other hydroelectric reservoirs with some corrections and specify the information about total greenhouse gases emission in the atmosphere.