Sludge Watch ==> Pennsylvania - Sludge Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

The USDA didn't have money to compensate Georgia farmers whose land was 
contaminated with toxic metals from sewage sludge, but they have hundreds of 
thousands of dollars to pay for some folks to sniff sludge in a laboratory.  
You have to wonder if this 'sniffer guy' is going to suffer health 
consequences.

Rural residents know the smell of sludge.  It isn't the odor of sludge that 
is at the heart of the issue.
The smell of sludge is a daily reminder to sludged communities  that their 
drinking water, food, health, and local ecology have been put at risk by the 
spreading of concentrated urban sewer wastes.  Indeed, anything as toxic as 
sewage sludge should smell bad.  Stuff that smells bad is nature's way of 
warning us to stay away.


(Note: Ed Hallman, Georgia lawyer, successfully sued the USDA for 
compensation for Georgia dairy farmers McElmurray & Sons, Inc. and Boyceland 
Dairy farms.  The time for all appeals has passed, so the farmers have been 
successful in their suit against the USDA)

.......................................


PA Farm News

May 14, 2008

PSU Odor-Assessment Laboratory Sniffs Out Ag Problems
By Jeff Mulhollem, PSU Ag Science News

UNIVERSITY PARK -- A member of the odor-assessment team bends over the 
machine, positions his nose in the cup and signals the operator seated at a 
computer terminal a few feet away that he is ready. With a couple of 
keystrokes, she directs the device – an olfactometer about the size of an 
ATM machine in a convenience store – to release a carefully calibrated 
puff of air and odor.

The odor component in the sample -- from treated municipal wastewater 
biosolids -- is so diluted that it’s not detectable to “the sniffer,” 
so the operator manipulates the machine to slightly increase the percentage 
of odor and emit another puff of air. This time he “smells” it, so the 
“odor detection threshold” of the sample is recorded. The process is 
repeated until the sniffer correctly recognizes odorous air puffs two times 
in a row, and then another member of the odor-assessment team takes his 
place, repeating the same battery of tests.

After that, they move on to testing another biosolids sample that has 
undergone a different treatment to diminish odor. So goes a typical day at 
Penn State’s Odor Assessment Laboratory in the Department of Agricultural 
and Biological Engineering on the University Park campus.

On this afternoon, the lab, under the direction of Eileen Wheeler, professor 
of agricultural engineering, was evaluating samples of municipal wastewater 
biosolids for a private consulting firm and another Pennsylvania university. 
Researchers were studying whether innovative treatments can make the 
material less odorous and more socially acceptable for various land 
applications.

In addition to providing services for other educational institutions and 
business and industry, the lab mainly collaborates with researchers across 
Penn State studying how to reduce gaseous emissions from animal agriculture, 
most with significant odorous components. Scientists are looking at 
solutions that range from manure additives to alternative livestock feeds.

The odor lab is partially funded by a $330,000 USDA grant to study how dairy 
productivity is affected by changing the feed rations of cattle and to 
investigate the resulting changes in odors and gases produced by the animal 
manure.

“As tensions on the urban-rural interface have grown, it has become more 
important to measure and reduce odors,” says Wheeler. “Researchers are 
working on strategies and products to diminish agricultural odors. We will 
never get rid of all odors coming from livestock farms, but we believe we 
can reduce them. And that has become vital now that situations such as 
housing developments bordering dairy farms have become common.”

The centerpiece of the odor lab is the olfactometer, a $35,000 piece of 
equipment that is the “international gold standard” when it comes to 
odor evaluation, according to Robin Brandt, a lecturer in agricultural and 
biological engineering who is director of the lab. Penn State is the only 
university in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions to have an agricultural 
environmental odor laboratory with an olfactometer, he points out.

“The olfactometer uses a process that allows comparison of our results to 
those from similar labs around the world,” Brandt says. “Day-to-day data 
collection and quality-assurance duties are the responsibility of senior 
research technologist Pat Topper, who also played a pivotal role in getting 
the odor lab up and running.”

But despite the wondrous technology, the human nose still plays the key role 
in odor detection and evaluation. The sniffers on Penn State’s 
odor-assessment team were selected only after Wheeler and Brandt established 
that their senses of smell were neither extremely sensitive nor 
exceptionally dull. And they have been trained to quantify what their noses 
tell them about odors. Graduate students and College of Agricultural 
Sciences staff, team members mostly tackle their sniffing chores with an air 
of cheerful resignation.

“Some people think that this is really unpleasant work, but I don’t 
think so,” says a petite, middle-aged female staff assistant who concedes 
she is an old hand at dealing with agricultural odors, having grown up on a 
central Pennsylvania dairy farm. “I have sniffed only one truly disgusting 
odor, and that was a high concentration of swine manure. That was kind of 
overwhelming.”

There has been some debate about odor analysis, Wheeler concedes. “There 
is agreement that the human nose is the ultimate sensor, but in most cases 
it is not a very accurate sensor because people have such strong emotions 
wrapped around certain smells,” she says. “Working with the olfactometer 
and a trained odor-assessment team, we have removed the emotion from the 
process. Only humans can characterize an odor. But whether I like an odor or 
not is completely subjective.”

Agricultural livestock odors can be made up of hundreds of different gases, 
Wheeler explains. Some argue that it would be simplest to measure just one 
odorant -- hydrogen sulfide or ammonia, for example -- and try to use that 
to quantify odor. “Unfortunately, most studies have been unable to 
correlate overall odor reduction with reduction of specific gases in the 
air,” she says. “So we continue to find ways to use the human nose in 
very controlled conditions.”

POSTED 080514_1000 ET

http://www.pafarmnews.com/Articles/2008/080514_PSU_odor.htm