perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities a cross-sectional study烦恼从环境感知气味和协会与大气中的氨含量非城市住宅社区的横断面研究.pdfVIP

Blanes-Vidal et al. Environmental Health 2012, 11:27 /content/11/1/27 RESEARCH Open Access Perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities: a cross-sectional study 1* 1 2 3 2 Victoria Blanes-Vidal , Esmaeil S Nadimi , Thomas Ellermann , Helle V Andersen and Per Løfstrøm Abstract Objective: Odor exposure is an environmental stressor that is responsible of many citizens complains about air pollution in non-urban areas. However, information about the exposure-response relation is scarce. One of the main challenges is to identify a measurable compound that can be related with odor annoyance responses. We investigated the association between regional and temporal variation of ammonia (NH3) concentrations in five Danish non-urban regions and environmental odor annoyance as perceived by the local residents. Methods: A cross-sectional study where NH3 concentration was obtained from the national air quality monitoring program and from emission-dispersion modelling, and odor pollution perception from questionnaires. The exposure-response model was a sigmoid model. Linear regression analyses were used to estimate the model constants after equation transformations. The model was validated using leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV) statistical method. Results: About 45% of the respondents were annoyed by odor pollution at their residential areas. The perceived odor was characterized by all respondents as animal waste odor. The exposure-annoyance sigmoid model showed that the prevalence of odor annoyance was significantly associated with NH3 concentrations (measured and estimated) at the loca