Industrial odorants: the relationship between modeled exposure concentrations and annoyance

In a series of epidemiologic studies, the relationship between objective exposure to odorant concentrations emitted by several industrial plants was investigated, as was the relationship between odor annoyance and subjective health complaints. Exposure was determined with a dispersion model of odorants, in which meteorological data and industrial emissions were used as input. Long-term averaged exposure was related to odor annoyance measured with a questionnaire. In addition, the influence of several other factors (demographic variables and variables emanating from the coping theory) on odor annoyance was studied. Among others, it appears that the dispersion model performs moderately well in predicting annoyance (correlations between odorant concentrations and odor annoyance were about 0.35). The extent to which people regard mal-odor as a threat to their health is a relatively strong predictor of annoyance. Moreover, the effects of long-term low exposure are similar to the effects of temporary high exposure.