Odour Regulations – Experiences from Australia

Abstract

Odorous emissions from waste treatment and management and intensive livestock operations often cause annoyance to local receptors, impacting quality of life, resulting in public complaints for regulatory agencies that require appropriate management responses. Within communities, there is often a large range of reactions to odorous emissions. On the one hand there are receptors that are very sensitive to specific odours (i.e. highly odour-sensitive) and will react very strongly to odours that are barely noticeable by the majority of the population. On the other hand there are other receptors within a population (often because of their association with the odour-generating activity) who are more tolerant to these odour annoyances. However, the bulk of the population lies between these two receptor groups, being unaffected by low levels of odour and being prepared to accept certain levels of odour annoyance. A major challenge for regulatory agencies is to provide community protection from offensive odours without unfairly disadvantaging odour-emitting industries that communities often rely on for their economic prosperity. To achieve this environmental outcome, regulators apply a range of odour management strategies, tailored to particular industry sources and emission impacts. Such strategies need to be able to minimise odour impacts from new activities, as well as resolve problems from existing operations.