Odour Threshold Investigation 2012 - Bay of Plenty Regional Council

Figure 7.7
Example of incomplete rounds (Panellists 3 and 5) with individual
thresholds still being determined upon “completion” of the round.
It can be seen from the top left portion of the datasheet that Panellist #3 had
attained a single 6 entry when the test was stopped, and it would be reasonable to
expect him/her to follow up with another 6, based on the prior inkling/certain pattern
recorded. However for Panellist #5 the situation is less obvious. It was decided to
exclude these types of results from the analysis. For untrained panellists two correct
inklings indicates that they detect it but still lack some confidence.
To remove conservatism, panellists that finished the round with either of the two
scenarios discussed above have been excluded from the following analysis
(Figure 7.8). 79% of the Rotorua panellists showed results whereby the round didn’t
finish with two correct identifications of the presented gas hence showing a high
level of insensitivity. For the Whakatāne group, 43% of the panellists showed this
pattern of not being able to successfully finish a round.
38 Environmental Publication 2012/06–A review of odour properties of H 2 S Odour Threshold Investigation 2012