The ASTM Committee E18 on Sensory Evaluation of Materials and Products has recently proposed to work on a new Guide for Temporal Methods for Sensory Attributes. This guideline is being developed by the Subcommittee E18.03 on Sensory Theory and Statistics and it is intended to describe procedures utilizing specially trained panelists to measure time-related sensory perceptions of multiple attributes and multiple events or exposures of products or other sensory stimuli.

   For the development of this standard, that will cover the procedures for measurement of time-related (temporal) sensory perceptions of multiple attributes, several methods will be described and compared to allow for the selection of the method appropriate to measure the temporal parameters of interest.

   The Service of Environmental Assessment (SEA) of the Ministry of Environment of Chile has just published an interesting (in Spanish) "Guideline for the evaluation and prognosis of odour impacts in the System for Environmental Impact Assessment  (SEIA)". This guideline describes different tools for the evaluation of the odour impact, from traditional ones like, odour surveys or olfactometry + dispersion modelling to the newer ones such as field inspections with the grid or the plume method. This guideline has been made simple for industrial operators and people who are new to this environmental field to learn a bit more about odour impact assessment.

   The Ministry of Environment of Chile  has been for a few years working in different activities related to odour management. They have organized a few initiatives such as the courses they organized in 2013 or the International Seminar that we organized thanks to their support  in 2014. All these initiatives have been very successful, and they have had a great impact in the expansion of the knowledge about odour management, but there was a need for document that summarized all the approaches and tools used nowadays to calculate the odour impact. This very interesting guideline (unfortunately, just in Spanish) get the aim of summarizing all the techniques used for odour management in just one text. But, does it define any odour impact criteria?