The 19th and 20th of March, the Working Group (WG) 41 of the European Standard Organization met in Milan to discuss several issues related to  Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS) or so called e-noses. This new standard was on the brisk of being downgraded to a technical specification, because the text developed by the experts was lacking a development on the first stage of Quality Assurance Level (QAL1), among other things.

   The European regulation allowed in the mandatory area only EN 15267 certified automated measuring systems (AMS) for the continuous measurements of air pollution. However, the QAL1-certification for AMS instruments cannot be applied, as is, for IOMS. The QAL1 certification clearly needs an adaptation to the complexities of measuring odours according to the 2 reference methods considered in this standard, the EN 13725 and the EN 16841.

   The 11^th of April there will be a free workshop dealing with standardization on low-cost sensors in Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) in Berlin. Within this Workshop, there will be a presentationd dedicated to standards on Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems. This part will be headed by Mr. Thorsten Conrad who is a member of the Working Group 41 of the European Standardization Committee (CEN).

   Mr Conrad will discuss in his presentation the state of the draft of the standard on IOMS developed by the CEN and will be open to questions on the matter. If you happen to be around Berlin on this day, and odour management is your stuff, it would be a good idea to attend this free workshop and to hear what this expert has to say.