Concept to assess the human perception of odour by estimating short-time peak concentrations from one-hour mean values. Reply to a comment by Müller et al

Abstract

Biologically relevant exposure to environmental pollutants often shows a non-linear relationship. For their assessment, as a rule short term concentrations have to be determined instead of long term mean values. This is also the case for the perception of odour. Regulatory dispersion models like AUSTAL2000 calculate long term mean concentration values (one-hour), but provide no information on the fluctuation from this mean. The ratio between a short term mean value (relevant for odour perception) and the long term mean value (calculated by the dispersion model), called the peak-to-mean value, is usually used to describe these fluctuations. In general, this ratio can be defined in different ways. Müller et al. (2012), in a comment to Schauberger et al. (2012) which includes a statement that AUSTAL2000 uses a constant factor of 4, argue that AUSTAL2000 does not apply a peak-to-mean factor and does not calculate odour exceedance probabilities. Instead it calculates the frequency of so-called odour-hours by applying the relation between the 90-percentile of the instantaneous concentration and the hourly mean (Janicke and Janicke, 2007a), not between some peak value and the mean. According to Janicke and Janicke (2007a), the 90-percentile of the instantaneous concentration can in practice be estimated with sufficient accuracy from the hourly mean by using a factor of 4. Having so far replied to Müller et al. (2012) we take additionally the opportunity to elaborate a little more on the peak-to-mean concept, especially pointing out that a constant factor independent of the stability of the atmosphere, the distance from and the geometry of the source, is not appropriate. On the contrary it shows a sophisticated structure which cannot be described by only one single value.