A Nose Job

Environmental officials in the San Francisco Bay Area have an assortment of instruments designed to monitor and evaluate the chemical and particle content of the air, but they have found no device yet that can match the human nose in detecting odors. In fact, the proboscis does such a good job that the Bay Area Regional Control Board recently established a panel of three people to screen odors. "In all fairness to the polluters, we will screen out hypersensitive noses," explained Tom Story, of the San Francisco Bay Area air-pollution control board, "and in all fairness to us, we will screen out the dead noses."

The entire staff of 200 at the smog agency is being tested for the nose jobs. Each employee is asked to don a mask attached to a dynamic olfactometer -a machine that regulates the strength of an odor by diluting it with air. Then he is subjected to a series of odor samples of varying strengths to establish the range in which his nose can identify 80% of the samples at a high odor concentration level and miss 80% at a low level. That range is known as the "confusion zone." When the tests are completed, the 100 employees with confusion zones closest to the group median will be placed on standby duty to fill the panel jobs. Says Story: "Nose duty will not be compulsory. It won't be written into the job description."

Once chosen, the panel will go into action any time the agency receives ten complaints about a particular odor within 90 days. If the apparent polluter happens to be an industrial concern, for example, investigators will go to the olfactory -as it were -and collect air directly from the smokestack. Each of the three panelists will then be asked to sniff 20 samples -ten from the smokestack and ten consisting of fresh air. If two of the three noses correctly identify eight of both the smoke and fresh air samples -in other words, if the odor is really noticeable and objectionable -the agency will issue a citation to the violator.

What is objectionable? Agricultural and barnyard smells, as well as restaurant odors, have been exempted from regulation. So have the smells of disinfectants from hospitals and odors from single-family dwellings. Nonetheless, says Story, "it's the toughest odor control anywhere." It may just make scents.

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