wg41 meeting bilbao 2019 2The 13th meeting of the Working Group (WG) 41 of the Technical Committee (TC) 264 on air quality of the European Standard Committee (CEN) dealing with Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS) coded as CEN/TC 264/WG 41, took place in Bilbao, Spain the 3rd and 4th of July. A total of 16 experts met to discuss the new standard on IOMSs, previously known as e-noses.

A new Task Group 5 (TG5) was created in the previous meeting in Milan in order to deal with the implications of the standards on Automatic Measuring Systems (AMS) EN 141881 and EN 15267, on IOMSs. Among the many issues addressed in this meeting in Bilbao, a new proposal to bring a Quality Assurance Level (QAL) 1 was discussed.

wg41   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.

e nose board   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.

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