Big beak to seek reeks
Landfill workers use Nasal Ranger to help in fight against stink
By ROB DAVIS
Date published: 2/5/2004
Sniff machine will help trace landfill odors
In Gotham, it's Batman who fights for good. In Metropolis, it's Superman.
King George County now has the Nasal Ranger.
It's no superhero, but it'll be on the front line in the battle against the odor coming from the King George County Landfill, the state's busiest.
The Nasal Ranger is an olfactometer, a $1,475 machine that measures smell. (It's also called an odor scope or a scentometer.) Its shape is part hair dryer, part radar gun.
Waste Management, the national company that runs the landfill, hopes the Ranger will help workers pinpoint the source of odors from the millions of tons of trash.
The landfill's smell has been a problem for more than a year. Last year's heavy rains caused trash to decompose faster than expected.
When garbage break downs, it releases gas. A tiny fraction of that gas--about 1 percent--is pure stink.
The smell has prompted many complaints from neighbors, who have described the odor as "nauseous" and "absolutely horrible."
"It infiltrates your house," said Andrew Wright, a landfill neighbor.
Those complaints have led the county to plan an independent study of the landfill odor and Waste Management's remediation work.
That effort has centered on increasing the capacity of a system that draws gas and odor from the compacted trash. More improvements are planned this year, including an odor-neutralizing system.
The latest step was Tuesday's training--called King George County Odor School--where landfill employees learned everything from how to use the Nasal Ranger to how their own noses work.
After school let out, they underwent "nose calibration."
That meant smelling a variety of felt-tipped markers to see whether any of the seven employees had a sense of smell that was too strong or too weak.
Six passed the test, and, starting Feb. 15, they will use their noses and the Ranger to check for odors at 19 points around the landfill. The seventh employee didn't lose his job; he just won't be on smell patrol because his nose isn't sensitive enough.
The Ranger has different settings to let in specific mixes of clean, filtered air and unfiltered air. As the concentration of unfiltered air changes, sniffers can objectively determine how strong the smell must be for them to detect it.
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Date published: 2/5/2004
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