Complementary approaches to measure environmental odours emitted by landfill areas

This paper presents different methods to assess the odour emission and the odour annoyance in the surroundings. It is shown, on the example of landfill areas and composting facilities, that chemical analyses are helpful to identify key compounds of the odour release, and to set up the specification of a monitoring instrument. Sensitive methods, like dynamic olfactometry or sniffing team investigation, are mainly applicable to provide a global odour plume or an average annoyance zone. And the electronic nose can supply a warning signal to the plant manager or a real time estimation of the annoyance zone.