Improved, GC-O Based, Malodor Assessment of Swine CAFO's with Novel Air Sampling Technology

Investigative odor research work to date indicates that with increasing distance from high-density swine feeder operations the residual odor is increasingly caused by a limited number of high priority odorous volatile chemicals. These character defining odorants appear to be dominated by compounds of relatively low volatility and high polarity. Recent work suggests that, as previously shown for high-density cattle operations, p-cresol and other semi-volatiles may carry much of the overall odor impact from similar swine facilities, especially for the situation of increasing distance from the source facility. If confirmed, such prioritization questions the appropriateness of odor assessment methods which are based on plastic sample bags, currently the predominant industry sampling approach for odor assessment. Several studies have shown that p-cresol and other high-impact, semi-volatile odorants are rapidly lost to the wall of the bag through scalping effects. This project was aimed at exploring alternative whole-air and analytical sampling strategies which address these limitations of plastic sampling bags for odor assessment relative to high density livestock feeder operations.