Quantification of wastewater odors by the affected public

Abstract

Odors associated with wastewater collection and treatment are a common problem. Wastewater odors are difficult to quantify, and current methods of quantification are too cumbersome to permit long‐term evaluation of odor problems. In this project, residents in affected neighborhoods near a treatment plant in Winston‐Salem, North Carolina quantified odors by completing numerical odor rating forms three times a day for six months. The resulting database was used to evaluate the correlation of odors to a variety of factors. Residents from the same neighborhood had a high level of agreement in quantifying odors, and most participants had a reasonable ability to make distinctions among different degrees of odor. Odors correlated well with wastewater characteristics (for example, influent COD) and wind direction, implicating the treatment plant as the major source of odors in affected neighborhoods. Use of the numerical odor rating form was an effective and inexpensive means of quantifying wastewater odors, and in conjunction with other information gave a better picture of specific major sources of odor at the treatment plant.

Air Pollution and Odor in Communities Near Industrial Swine Operations

“…Although spontaneous reports of malodor may be quantified (e.g., Aitken and Okun 1992; Drew et al 2007), this approach mixes variation in odor with variation in people’s propensities to report odors and the limited availability of public agencies or researchers to track reports.…”

Identification of odour sources in an industrial park from resident diaries statistics

“…For odour ratings above 0, distribution is close to normal and allows the application of statistics. To test the performances of respondents to discriminate among odour ratings in that upper part of the scale, we calculated a coefficient of discernment (CD), as suggested by Aitken and Okun (1992), and defined, for each respondent, as:…”

“…So, it is seldom possible to set up a random population sample and to respect the demographic profile of the investigated zone. Resident diaries generally involve volunteers who are recruited in the estimated immission area (Wing et al, 2008;Aitken and Okun, 1992;Gallego et al, 2008). Sometimes, odour panellists are selected for living within or adjacent to a predefined spatial grid, but anyway, they have to accept to be regularly questioned (Guo et al, 2003).…”

“…Sometimes, odour panellists are selected for living within or adjacent to a predefined spatial grid, but anyway, they have to accept to be regularly questioned (Guo et al, 2003). In any case, it is always useful to train the panel members before the study, either by odour intensity estimation of a set of butanol dilutions (Nimmermark et al, 2005;Guo et al, 2003) or by asking participants to choose which of different vials has an odour (Wing et al, 2008) or at least by inviting them to attend preliminary community meetings helping to design the data collection (Aitken and Okun, 1992).…”

“…Now, a seasonal variation is clearly observed, whereas the continuous OAI evolution did not reveal any trend. Finally, average odour ratings could be calculated by weighting the ratings according to the response frequency of residents (Aitken and Okun, 1992). In our case, this additional procedure does not provide any new information (grey bars on Fig.…”