Published the first Guideline for prognosis and evaluation of odour impacts in Chile

   The Service of Environmental Assessment (SEA) of the Ministry of Environment of Chile has just published an interesting (in Spanish) "Guideline for the evaluation and prognosis of odour impacts in the System for Environmental Impact Assessment  (SEIA)". This guideline describes different tools for the evaluation of the odour impact, from traditional ones like, odour surveys or olfactometry + dispersion modelling to the newer ones such as field inspections with the grid or the plume method. This guideline has been made simple for industrial operators and people who are new to this environmental field to learn a bit more about odour impact assessment.

   The Ministry of Environment of Chile  has been for a few years working in different activities related to odour management. They have organized a few initiatives such as the courses they organized in 2013 or the International Seminar that we organized thanks to their support  in 2014. All these initiatives have been very successful, and they have had a great impact in the expansion of the knowledge about odour management, but there was a need for document that summarized all the approaches and tools used nowadays to calculate the odour impact. This very interesting guideline (unfortunately, just in Spanish) get the aim of summarizing all the techniques used for odour management in just one text. But, does it define any odour impact criteria?

   This guideline does not define an odour limit value, at least not in the "traditional" way described in other guidelines of other countries. However, there is a limit set by the definition of the "annoyance threshold" which is defined as that odour concentration that makes that a 5% of the population to suffer annoyance for a period longer than 2% of the time.

   There are other interesting aspects in this guideline, which is very well edited with diagrams and photos. In our opinion, this document reaches its aim, which is to be read.

   For more info download the guideline here.

If you find this article interesting, you might be also interested in these articles.

• Approval of the new Chilean norm NCh3190 transposition of the European EN 13725.
• Odour Pollution Project Law presented in the Deputy Chamber of Chile.
• Presentation of the strategy for odour management 2014-2017 in Chile
• A transposition of the German VDI 3880 for sampling on olfactometry in Chile is being discussed.
• First International Seminar of Odours in the Environment, Santiago, Chile, 4-5 March 2014