What’s that smell?
“Electronic noses” helping Denver to purge foul odors
Odor-detecting “electronic noses” deployed this past month mark Denver’s latest push to purge its olfactory environment as foul fumes again waft into neighborhoods, intensifying with spring as the weather warms.
Irked residents complain to the city about every two days, records show, and municipal inspectors focus on familiar industrial emitters, including a 91-year-old pet food factory, marijuana producers, asphalt factories, an oil refinery and processors of grocery and slaughterhouse waste.
“It’s horrible to wake up in the morning to that smell,” Dawn Diaz, 38, said in front of her house in hard-hit Globeville, where her extended family and five children with respiratory ailments have lived all their lives.
“Definitely somewhere I wouldn’t choose to live,” said Diaz, who finds her eyes water frequently and relies on nasal spray and allergy meds for relief. “You get sick more.”
Adams County Commissioner Steve
O’Dorisio, recalling marathoners’ disgust during a race along the South Platte River in 2015, called the air quality “embarrassing.”
The installation of these electronic noses expands Denver’s approach of requiring more than 330 industrial facilities inside city boundaries to submit odor control plans that identify sources and mitigation measures such as filters.
Starting this spring as part of a $50,000 pilot project, city environmental health inspectors have been monitoring readings from the e-nose sensors that measure concentrations of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and volatile organic chemicals. These are combined to calculate odor intensity.