How a European Standard about odours was born in 1991

le 30 juillet 2015.

Photo: referendum in Ukraine

in December 1991.

It was around 24 years ago in Amsterdam. To be precise the 2^nd of December, 1991. At the same time that Mikhail Gorbachev was thinking about resigning as President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a group of enthusiasts met to discuss about the first standard about odour concentration measurement. Today, 33 countries of Europe are using this standard to measure odour concentration. But that was not easy a few years back.

To start with this history we should go back to 1984.

The 8th Meeting of the group dealing with the updating of the Standard EN 13725 took place in Amsterdam

le 10 juillet 2015.

The 8th meeting of the group dealing with the revision of the EN 13725 took place in Amsterdam at the begining of June. Some important issues have being discussed.

This time the list of participants was not as large as in previous meeting. Just 15 people met in Amsterdam. However the list of actions approved was really high, as 23 actions were taken.

Interlaboratory Proficiency Tests carried out in 2014

le 1 juillet 2015.

Last year, a total of 40 laboratories from 14 different countries participated in an interlaboratory test to check proficiency according to European standard EN 13725/2003 organized by the company Odournet.Test criteria used in this comparison to assess the results were the precision under repeatability conditions r and accuracy A for 1-butanol of the laboratory according to EN 13725. There were 38 participants from Europe and 2 from Chile.

A number of 34 laboratories in this study stated that they have been accredited for EN 13725 olfactometry measurements according to EN ISO/IEC 17025. The following table shows the list of participants.