Odour Compliance Laboratory

As manager of your firm’s environmental affairs, you appreciate the necessity of having reliable, accurate data, particularly when the Ministry of the Environment visits or when asked to respond to neighbourhood complaints.

Odour is the primary cause of complaints related to air emissions, and the public often perceives industrial odour as directly proportional to adverse health. Industrial and residential confrontations over odours will only rise with local zoning changes.

By far, the most difficult of all regulated contaminants to deal with is odour. Pleasant smells can be annoying after prolonged exposure and foul smells are instantly annoying. In addition, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment regulation pertaining to odour is difficult to comprehend and yet vital to know when responding to the Ministry, defending a complaint or developing a corrective action strategy. Incorrect assumptions or bad data can have far-reaching financial implications.

As a provider of environmental compliance, assessment and abatement services, Pinchin Environmental recognizes the importance of reliable test data, particularly when odour is involved. As you can appreciate, engineering a solution based on unreliable data is destined for failure. As a result, Pinchin has constructed an odour evaluation laboratory located at our head office in Mississauga. The laboratory incorporates an odour-free presentation room and a triangular forced-choice, ascending concentration, dynamic dilution olfactometer.

Our state-of-the-art olfactometer incorporates a number of improvements over existing systems currently in use that we believe will greatly improve data accuracy, quality and reproducibility. As well, the olfactometer meets or exceeds all current European and US standards for olfactometry. Finally, all evaluations are performed in accordance with both Ontario Ministry of the Environment protocols and American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standard practices. Operation of the olfactometer and our odour lab have been examined by the Ministry and approved for compliance odour analysis.

The benefits of odour evaluation with the olfactometer are numerous. However, most important to our clients is our ability to fully control and monitor product quality with complete client confidentiality. Our staff and assessors are fully trained to perform the analyses and, more importantly, to understand the significance of the results. Pinchin staff specializes in odour assessment and abatement, which is comforting when you need professional support.

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