The Technical Committee 264 (TC264) on Air Quality has decided to grant an extension to the work developed by the experts on Working Group 41 (WG41) focused on Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS) by activating a work item. That means that the group will have 3 more years to develop this standard.

   The first meeting of this group took place three and a half years ago in Antwerp, Belgium. Much work has been done during this time by the around 15 experts that usually meet in these 2-days sessions that are hold usually three times a year. In addition, there are also Task Group meetings planned around the year and videomeetings hold from time to time. So there is a lot of work and a lot of hours here to develop a standard.

   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.