Interpretation of odor complaint records with BTEX pollutants and meteorological factors: Çorlu case study

Abstract

Air pollution in urban areas increases as a result of emitted air from different sources within the mixing layer of troposphere. Odor pollution is amongst the primary reasons behind environmental nuisance and occurrence of citizen complaints. Frequent exposure to odorous compounds and/or odor nuisance are increasingly associated with air pollution problems. Besides, there is no universally accepted environmental odor management method reported so far. Level of air pollutants emission, distance of emission sources to residential areas, to-pography, geographical and meteorological conditions have influence on imposed level of air pollution and odor pollution in cities. This study is built on the citizen odor complaint data (based on frequency, intensity, duration, odor tone and location (namely the FIDOL factors) collected in Çorlu/Tekirdağ through the GIS integrated public participated platform, namely the Çorlu KODER mobile application. The annual odor complaint data was briefly introduced and given an evaluation with the mo-bile app users demographic information. The obtained data between August 28-November 2 of 2021, was subjected to interpretative evaluation and statistical analysis with BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylene benzene and xylen) concentrations, inorganic air pollution concentrations and meteorological factors. In light of the obtained results, temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and toluene concentration were found to play a significant role on the number of citizen odor complaints. The EU reported limit value, lower rating threshold and upper rating threshold for BTEX pollutants have been exceeded several times. The average Toluene/benzene ratios obtained during the study show that; non-traffic sources contribute significantly to VOC emissions. Air pollutants transportation mechanism from neighbouring OIZ settlements become a prominent justification and support the hypothesis that residential areas of Corlu are under the effect of industrial air pollution and odor pollution con-stituents. There is low level of negative correlation between the benzene measured in Çorlu and WS (r=-0.63). Below 2.4 m/s, the average number of odor complaints (ANOC) tend to increase, while above this level odor complaints are diminished). The ANOC remained around 4 for[C] < 4 ug/m3 and reached to 18 for [C]BTEXtotal > 8 ug/m3. Above [C]Toluen=3 ug/m3 conditions, Daily ANOC increase from 7 to 19. Over [C]Toluen= 4 ug/m3 conditions, it reached up to 23. Increses in the number of daily ANOC by temperature is distinct over 21 C0 and reaches to 35. The GIS integrated citizen complaint collection platforms are critical for real-time data collection of environmental complaints with high spatiotemporal accuracy. Citizen odor complaint surveys are useful monitoring tools and obtained data sets can be used to identify sensitive areas where and when specific actions should be taken and air pollutants measuement studies be performed.