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Perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities: a cross-sectional study

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 o...

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Autores principales: Blanes-Vidal, Victoria, Nadimi, Esmaeil S, Ellermann, Thomas, Andersen, Helle V, Løfstrøm, Per
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3458882/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22513250
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-069X-11-27
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author Blanes-Vidal, Victoria
Nadimi, Esmaeil S
Ellermann, Thomas
Andersen, Helle V
Løfstrøm, Per
author_facet Blanes-Vidal, Victoria
Nadimi, Esmaeil S
Ellermann, Thomas
Andersen, Helle V
Løfstrøm, Per
author_sort Blanes-Vidal, Victoria
collection PubMed
description 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 (NH(3)) concentrations in five Danish non-urban regions and environmental odor annoyance as perceived by the local residents. METHODS: A cross-sectional study where NH(3) 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 NH(3) concentrations (measured and estimated) at the local air quality monitoring stations (p < 0.01,R(2) = 0.99; and p < 0.05,R(2) = 0.93; respectively). Prediction errors were below 5.1% and 20% respectively. The seasonal pattern of odor perception was associated with the seasonal variation in NH(3) concentrations (p < 0.001, adjusted R(2) = 0.68). CONCLUSION: The results suggest that atmospheric NH(3) levels at local air quality stations could be used as indicators of prevalence of odor annoyance in non-urban residential communities.
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spelling pubmed-34588822012-09-28 Perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities: a cross-sectional study Blanes-Vidal, Victoria Nadimi, Esmaeil S Ellermann, Thomas Andersen, Helle V Løfstrøm, Per Environ Health Research 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 (NH(3)) concentrations in five Danish non-urban regions and environmental odor annoyance as perceived by the local residents. METHODS: A cross-sectional study where NH(3) 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 NH(3) concentrations (measured and estimated) at the local air quality monitoring stations (p < 0.01,R(2) = 0.99; and p < 0.05,R(2) = 0.93; respectively). Prediction errors were below 5.1% and 20% respectively. The seasonal pattern of odor perception was associated with the seasonal variation in NH(3) concentrations (p < 0.001, adjusted R(2) = 0.68). CONCLUSION: The results suggest that atmospheric NH(3) levels at local air quality stations could be used as indicators of prevalence of odor annoyance in non-urban residential communities. BioMed Central 2012-04-18 /pmc/articles/PMC3458882/ /pubmed/22513250 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-069X-11-27 Text en Copyright © 2012 Blanes-Vidal et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Blanes-Vidal, Victoria
Nadimi, Esmaeil S
Ellermann, Thomas
Andersen, Helle V
Løfstrøm, Per
Perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities: a cross-sectional study
title Perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities: a cross-sectional study
title_full Perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities: a cross-sectional study
title_fullStr Perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities: a cross-sectional study
title_full_unstemmed Perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities: a cross-sectional study
title_short Perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities: a cross-sectional study
title_sort perceived annoyance from environmental odors and association with atmospheric ammonia levels in non-urban residential communities: a cross-sectional study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3458882/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22513250
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-069X-11-27
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