The 18th meeting of CEN/TC 264/WG 41 that is dealing with the new standard on Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS) took place last 28^th of September. This was a short meeting to discuss some approaches for quality assurance and a call for volunteers to provide data to find out the best way to set a robust confidence interval for IOMSs. 

   After the last meeting discussions, it was clear that a plausibility check with real data was needed in order to test if the Chebyshev's inequality was appropriate as QAL1 procedure for IOMSs. Unfortunately, not enough data are available at this stage and no decision have been taken on this regard. The group is looking for more data on IOMS vs olfactometry tests to validate the statistical approach suggested, so anyone interested in contributing here may contact the task group leader to provide those data under a NDA.

   Last Monday took place the 17th meeting of Working Group 41 (WG41) that is dealing on the new standard for Instrumental Odour Monitoring Systems (IOMS). This meeting was focusing on the statistics behind the Quality Assurance Level 1 (QAL1) of IOMSs. There are some aspects that make IOMS special as compared to other Automatic Measuring Systems (AMS) and one of these aspects is the cost of comparing the electronic signal of the IOMS with that of the reference method EN 13725.

   One of the key issues addressed many times during the WG41 meetings is that of the number of samples that should be taken in order to make QAL1 checks viable for IOMS manufacturers. Dynamic Olfactometry comes at a cost and odour is not a substance, it is a class. The question is: how many samples should be taken in order to have a representative picture of the IOMS performance?