A new version of the Guidance on the assessment of odour for planning has been published. This version is edited by the Institute of Air Quality Management. This version from July 2018 reviews and modify some text, tables and diagrams from the previous version.

   The planning system has the task of guiding development to the most appropriate locations: ideally, significant sources of odour should be separated from odour-sensitive users of the surrounding land (sensitive receptors); failing this, it may be possible to employ control and mitigation measures to make a proposed development acceptable from a land-use perspective. New proposals for such developments may require an odour impact assessment to be submitted, either as a stand-alone assessment or as part of an Environmental Statement, to accompany the planning application.

   A few standards dealing with odours from different materials and developed by the ASTM have been recently published.  The Standard Practice for Evaluating Foreign Odors and/or Flavors from Paper Packaging has been updated to the last version. Also the Standard Guide for Measuring and Tracking Performance of Assessors on a Descriptive Sensory Panel, and the Standard Guide for Selecting and Using Scales for Sensory Evaluation. 

   The US standard ASTM E619 that deals with practices for evaluating odours in paper packaging was first publised in 1995 and it was revised in 2003 and 2009. This time there are some minor changes on the title and the text that needed to be done and now the version E619-17 is finally available for purchase.