Environmental odour news

Space smells funny: Discovery crew WASHINGTON: The space shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven have safely returned to Earth. But the one thing pilots can't get out their noses is space's "weird" smell.  "One thing I've heard people say before, but it wasn't so obvious, was the smell right when you open up that hatch," Live Science quoted Discovery pilot Dominic Antonelli, as saying after a March 21 spacewalk.  "Space definitely has a smell that's different than anything else," Antonelli added.  Koichi Wakata, part of Discovery crew claimed he too could smell the odd odor that wafted in from outside ISS.  According to ex-NASA astronaut Thomas Jones, a veteran of three spacewalks, the odor could stem from atomic oxygen that clings to spacesuit fabric. Jones added the smell is similar to burnt gunpowder.

A POULTRY farm at Silverdale has sparked outrage among some residents in the area. Neil Lindemann who lives about 700 metres from the poultry farm on Prenzler Road, is disgusted with the smell coming from the farm. “It's the foulest odour you could ever imagine. It just makes you sick every time you breathe it in,” Mr Lindemann said. Despite several talks with the farm's owner since he began operating the farm almost five weeks ago, Mr Lindemann said it appeared little was getting done. “The smell went away for a little bit but now the fans on the northern side must get switched on at night because I wake up to the smell,” he said. “It's just absolutely disgusting and even my family won't come and stay here anymore because they can't stand the smell either.” Scenic Rim Councillor Heather Wehl said she was aware of the issue and doing everything in her power to stop it. “Complaints like this can be time-consuming to investigate as we have to follow the correct proces...

Irving Oil Ltd. is dispatching thousands of letters to people living near its Saint John refinery explaining why they might smell an unusual odour and what the company is doing to correct it. Jennifer Parker, a company spokeswoman, said there was a problem with one of the oil storage tanks and oil got onto the rooftop. "We did have a situation on Wednesday where some of that product ended up on top of the floating roofs, and as a result, there has been an odour present around the refinery," Parker said. "And due to wind direction, some of that odour was present in the Champlain Heights area over the last few days." Parker said the tank will be drained by Monday so that repairs can be done, if necessary. Until then, the company is applying foam on top of the oil to minimize the smell. The company official said it was necessary to inform area residents as quickly as possible about the odour to allay any potential fears. "Whenever we have an issue like this that w...

Burwood Beach Wastewater Treatment Works treats wastewater from the Newcastle City area and suburbs to Dudley in the south, Wallsend in the west and Mayfield in the north. Odour Control Upgrade – A new odour control system will be provided to treat odours from the screenings building and primary pump station. These two locations generate 95% of odours from the site. Odours air will be ducted to a new biofilter unit for treatment. An REF for the project has been completed. Construction is expected to commence in January 2009.

CHARCTERISTICS Hydrogen Sulphide gas can be extremely dangerous in your workplace. In order to protect yourself you will need to be thoroughly familiar with characteristics of H2S listed below. COLOURLESS Hydrogen Sulphide is a colorless gas so it is not visibly detected. ROTTEN EGG SMELL At low concentrations H2s has a distinct rotten egg odour. At higher dangerous concentrations, the gas is odourless because it deadens the sense of smell. Therefore, don’t count on the rotten egg smell to warn you of its presence. HAVER THAN AIR Since H2S is slightly heavier air it can accumulate in low lying and confined areas. Be especially aware that ditches, tanks and other confined spaces can collect the gas. CORROSIVE H2S is very corrosive to certain metals. For this reason pipe values and other equipment should be properly maintained when H2S is present. FLAMMABLE Hydrogen Sulphide ignites at the relatively low temperature of 360C to produce sulphur dioxide, anther toxic gas. WATER SOLUBLE Hydr...

Korean researchers have combined human smell receptors with nanotechnology to create a new kind of 'bio-electronic nose' that they hope will help improve understanding of the human sense of smell. Tai Hyun Park and Jyongsik Jang from Seoul National University combined their research groups' expertise in biotechnology and conducting polymer devices, mounting human olfactory receptor (hOR) proteins on conducting polymer nanotubes. They then attached these nanotubes to a microelectrode array to create a field-effect transistor, which then allows changes in the electrical signal that occur when odour molecules bind to the receptor proteins to be detected. Human smell receptors are attached to a conducting polymer nanotube which a laid over two electrodes © Angewandte Chemie Park says the system can detect smells very well. 'The proteins have amine groups on the surface and the conducting polymers are functionalised with carboxylic acids, so we can covalently link the prote...

Bowing to pressure from thousands of residents, Durham Region has changed its mind about letting York Region build a sewage odour control facility in Pickering. In a unanimous decision today, council agreed to tell the Ministry of the Environment they want the facility built in York, well away from the proposed location at Alton Rd. and Finch Ave. E. "The message to York is, 'Take it and move it,'" Pickering Council Bill McLean said as area residents packed the council chamber at regional headquarters. More than 4,500 people voiced their opposition in emails and petitions arguing that the odour-control facility that will treat the stench from York Region's sewage will foul the air, lower property values and pose a potential health risk. The project is awaiting provincial government approval but McLean said council's decision today should "carry a lot of weight" in having the environment ministry tell York to look at possible sites there. The faci...

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Des Moines - In Congress, a $1.7m budget item for pig odour research in Iowa has become a big, fat joke among Republicans who say it's an example of unnecessary spending. But the people who live cheek by jowl with hog farms in the No 1 pig-producing state aren't laughing. They're gagging. "You hold your breath and when it's really bad you get the taste in your mouth," said Carroll Harless, a 70-year-old retired corn-and-soybean farmer from Iowa Falls. In Iowa, where the 20 million hogs easily outnumber the 3 million people, the rotten-egg-and-ammonia smell of hog waste often wafts into homes, landing like a punch to the chest. "Once, we couldn't go outside for a week," said Karen Forbes, who lives near a hog feedlot outside Lorimor. "It burnt your eyes. You couldn't breathe. You had to take a deep breath and run for your garage. It was horrid." She recalls a citywide garage sale held in the town of 420 a couple of years ago that no ...

Coalition group welcomes news, remains committed to scrutinizing details of new compost plant The Ministry of the Environment is working on stricter odour requirements for waste management facilities that will be in place by the time the city moves forward with its new compost plant. "Odour is clearly a documented issue at compost plants," said Ian Parrott, manager of the ministry's environmental assessment and approvals branch in Toronto. "We're beefing up our requirements." These changes will demand more from the property owner, including regularly documenting odour concerns, looking for potentials for odour and where odour can be eliminated, he said. Janet Laird, the city's director of environmental services, said this is a positive step because it will allow any potential issues to be flagged earlier. "We're looking forward to that," she said. Guelph's first organics facility was shut down in 2006 because of odours and the faster-th...

THE Petitions Committee of the European Parliament has agreed to investigate Dublin City Council’s plan to extend the controversial sewage treatment plant in Ringsend. Residents in the Ringsend, Sandymount and Irishtown areas have complained of foul odours from the facility ever since it opened in 2003. The city council has repeatedly promised to rectify the odour problem and eradicate the smell before extending the plant. In 2007, the local authority started the process of extending the controversial sewage plant at a cost of more than €50 million. The council intends to redevelop the plant and expand capacity to deal with waste from 2.2 million and possibly up to 2.8 million people. In March last year, An Bord Pleanála told the city council that it would have to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) on the grounds that the extension was "likely to have significant effects on the environment". In a letter to the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament last y...

 (=aroma threshold value, =OTV, =ATV)) is a measure of odor intensity of a substance. It is defined as a minimal  concentration  of that substance that can be detected by human  nose . Some substances can be detected when their concentration is only few  miligrams  per 1000  tonnes  which is less than a  drop  in  olympic swimming pool . Odor threshold value can be expressed as a concentration in water or concentration in air. Examples of some substances with strong odor. (Z)-8- tetradecenal  (OTV = 0.009 ppb in water), p- vinylguaiacol  (OTV = 10  ppb ) [ 1 ] See also: Odor detection threshold Samuel Goldwyn  - "I read part of it all the way through."

New research has suggested that desert ants input both local smells and visual cues into their navigation systems to guide them home. Until now, researchers thought that the Desert Ant Cataglyphis fortis, which makes its home in the inhospitable salt pans of Tunisia, was a pure vision-guided insect. But, Kathrin Steck, Bill Hansson and Markus Knaden from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, used gas chromatography to verify that desert microhabitats do have unique odour signatures that can guide the ants back to the nest.  After having identified some odours of these signatures, the researchers trained ants in field experiments to recognize these odours pointing to a hidden nest entrance. Ants learned to associate their nest entrance with a single odour and discriminated the training odour against non-training odours. They even picked out the training odour from a four-odour blend.  The ants were less focused when faced with a blend rather than the pure ...

New research from University of California, Davis, shows why a species of tiny worm can learn to ignore an odour – information that could have implications for how human memories are formed.  Scientists have known for decades that sensory neurons – nerves in places like our fingers, ears and eyes – begin the complex task of processing sights, sounds and other stimuli before forwarding the job to the body's mainframe computer: the brain. But just how these neurons accomplish their task has not been well understood. Now researchers at UC Davis have made a startling discovery: that in olfactory neurons, odour bypasses the normal regulatory pathways in the nucleus and instead boosts synthesis of a protein by acting on RNA, the molecular messengers that typically carry instructions from DNA in the nucleus to protein-building mechanisms in the cell. "What is unique about this study is that it provides the first evidence that a chemical in our environment changes gene expression i...

Peel Region shipped 50 truckloads of unfinished compost to Cornerstone Landscaping in Barrie because its organics processing facility in Caledon had to shut down due to odours. Green Party at a political crossroads Diane McInnis is uncomfortable. Ontario municipalities 'scrambling' to cope with surge in kitchen refuse and plant closings Ontario facilities that compost kitchen waste are in such short supply that thousands of tonnes have been sent to the United States for incineration and at least one municipality has improperly dumped truckloads within the province. Severe odour problems are the main reason for the closing of facilities, including Peel Region's compost-curing location in Caledon and two plants in Quebec that took thousands of tonnes from Toronto and York region. At the same time, new facilities in Ontario can barely meet the surging demand from municipal green bin programs that recycle food waste into high-grade compost. "If somebody goes out of busines...