The 19th and 20th of March, the Working Group (WG) 41 of the European Standard Organization met in Milan to discuss several issues related to Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS) or so called e-noses. This new standard was on the brisk of being downgraded to a technical specification, because the text developed by the experts was lacking a development on the first stage of Quality Assurance Level (QAL1), among other things.
The European regulation allowed in the mandatory area only EN 15267 certified automated measuring systems (AMS) for the continuous measurements of air pollution. However, the QAL1-certification for AMS instruments cannot be applied, as is, for IOMS. The QAL1 certification clearly needs an adaptation to the complexities of measuring odours according to the 2 reference methods considered in this standard, the EN 13725 and the EN 16841.
The EN 15267 certification is divided into the following work procedures:
- Laboratory test
- Field test
- Auditing the manufacturer’s quality management system
A new Technical Group was created led by Mr. Rossi that will try to adapt the specifications of EN 15267 on the new standard on IOMS.
The draft of the standard was sent to the European national standardization bodies in order to vote either the continuation of the work, to downgrade the Standard to a non-mandatory Technical Specification (TS) or to cancel the work. Due date for this ballot was the 25th of March and the members of TC264 took the decision to go on with the work of the WG41. The decision was taken with 15 positive votes, 1 negative vote and 9 abstentions.
In addition, a new German standard on Odour-related measurements with electronic noses and their testing (VDI/VDE 3518 Blatt 3:2018-12) was recently published and part of the discussion was focused on this matter.
Many other interesting topics were discussed during the one and a half day of meetings. Next meeting, will take place in Bilbao the 3rd and 4th of July and it will be organized by olores.org. It will be a pleasure to host these odour experts in our city again.
