Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of the Environment Agency changing its methodology for estimating the prevalence and impact of odour from using a subjective 0 to 6 scale to using scientific monitoring equipment.

Scientific instrumentation used for detecting odours in the outdoors can only be used to assess a very small number of gases, and the detection limits in these instruments may not be low enough to detect all the compounds responsible for odour annoyance detected by the human nose. The Environment Agency makes use of ambient air monitoring using instruments for specific odorous gases where this will yield useful results.

The Environment Agency regularly reviews new equipment with potential for use in field odour assessments as and when it becomes available. However, so far these solutions have not been found to be as robust and versatile as the current methods used.