Review of adverse health effects of odours in field studies

摘要

Exposure to environmental odours from industrial and agricultural premises, in addition toninducing annoyance responses in a dose-dependent manner, have been shown to be eitherndirectly associated with gastric symptoms as well as general health-related complaints undernextreme exposure conditions, or indirectly mediated through odour annoyance under moderatenodour exposure conditions. Objective: In order to examine the influence of hedonic tonen(pleasantness-unpleasantness) and perceived odour strength (intensity) on symptom reporting thenresults of two pertinent field studies were analysed. Methods: In the vicinity of six industrialnplants (sweets, rusk, textile, seed-oil, fat, cast iron) and eleven livestock operations (poultry, pig,ncattle) assessment of odour exposure was done by means of systematic field inspections. Effectnassessment was done by means of direct interviews (industrial: N ¼ 1456, agricultural: N ¼ 1053)nusing questionnaires covering odour annoyance, symptom reporting and relevant covariates. Datananalysis: Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to establish dose-response associationsnbetween odour frequency, intensity and hedonic tone as independent variables and symptomnreporting as dependent variable. Results: Exposure-symptom associations are strongly influencednby hedonic tone, whereas intensity has no additional predictive value. Adding odour annoyancento the regression model shows that symptom reporting is exclusively mediated by annoyance.