As many of you know, there was an active CEN group dealing with the standardisation of a procedure to validate the use of IOMS (Instrumental Odour Monitoring System) for odour measurements. Still, after 20 meetings over six years, the group ended the time assigned without presenting a final draft standard for voting to the TC 264 "Air Quality".

   The good news is, however, that the CEN Technical Committee 264 on Air Quality has re-introduced a new Work Item (WI) on the agenda. This WI  re-starts the standard drafting process in WG 41 with a new fresh timeline. UNI (Italian National Standardisation body) is now responsible for continuing the work performed until now by the Dutch Standardization Body NEN.

   The city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, made an enormous effort to clean up its water bodies by eliminating the discharge points in the city as well as the collection and treatment of 100% of the produced wastewater. However, these improvements brought unexpected consequences in the production of gases and the generation of offensive odors from the wastewater collection, treatment and final disposal system.

   This problem has forced Cartagena to define and develop a strategy that under a continuous improvement scheme has allowed diagnosing scenarios according to the particularities of the territory, evaluating alternatives, verifying the effectiveness of the interventions carried out from different fronts and, based on this, carrying out the pertinent adjustments focused on preventing, controlling and mitigating the generation and emission of offensive odors.