Over five years have passed by since the first meeting of the Working Group (WG) 41 dealing with Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS). WG41 is under the umbrella of the Technical Committee 264 on Air Quality of the CEN. In these over 5 years, the group have met 20 times to try to get a draft of a text to be approved in the time frame available for CEN Standards, but WG41 could not deliver that draft. This means that there will not be a European standard on IOMS in the near future.

   CEN has decided to start over the process with WG41. After an initial extension given in 2019, the text could not be finalized, so now it is time to wrap up and start over again. This means that there will be no standard on IOMS in the near future. The new work item will be proposed by the end of the year in order to be approved during the next TC meeting (May 2022). Later it will be circulated and voted from all countries, which takes 6 to 8 months, so, according to some experts asked, the work will not start before February/March 2023.

   The Odour Working Group (OWG) of the Spanish Association of Water Supply and Sanitation (AEAS) will meet on 15th April to discuss the progress of its various working groups (WG). One of these WGs is working on a survey to assess the cost of odour management in sanitation systems serving more than 10,000 equivalent inhabitants in Spain.

   The response to this survey on odour management in sanitary infrastructure, consisting of 57 questions and 9 pages about odour management in Spain's sanitation infrastructure, has been a great success, with nearly 400 responses received, representing approximately 42% of the WWTPs in Spain.