The draft of the German standard VDI 3940 Part 6:2025-07 was published in July this year. This text addresses the determination of disgusting and nauseating odours. This standard is currently in draft stage, accepting comments from interested parties.

  During the last biennial conference of the Association of German Engineers (VDI)on odour management in the environment, held in Salzburg, several interesting presentations took place. One of them moved away from the concept of odour as being “only an annoyance”. In fact, this presentation, given by Dr Kirsten Sucker, addressed the question of whether an odour “merely” constitutes a considerable nuisance or whether it is so disgusting and nauseating that it should be classified as a harmful effect on the environment. But what exactly is the difference and how can this be determined?

   The German standard for calculating uncertainty in odour measurements—VDI-EE 3884 Part 1.1—was officially published in October 2024. That is a year ago, so why did we wait that long to publish something about this new standard? because it is a bit complex and there is a bit of a history here. That history started during the development of the revission of the EN13725 a few years ago. In the conversations related to the calculation of the uncertainty, there were two groups there, one that we will call the "Italo-Dutch" school and another one being the "German" school. The thing is that the Italo-Dutch school finally developed this part. The reasons why that happened are well beyond this simple journalistic piece of text, but the Germans were not happy about it, and this was the begining of the path that led to the standard VDI-EE 3884 Part 1.1.

   The EN 13725:2022 standard came with a new set of statistical tools for calculating uncertainty. However, until now, work in certain areas related to the measurement of uncertainty in environmental samples had been purely theoretical. This aspect has undergone significant methodological revision in Germany in response to the results of a comprehensive comparative study. The new VDI-EE 3884 Part 1.1 standard modifies and corrects the method of calculating uncertainty, moving away from the core elements of the EN 13725:2022 standard.