COMPARISON BY 12 LABORATORIES OF THE ODOR QUALITIES OF 9 CHEMICALS SNIFFED FROM THE BOTTLE AND AS GAS-LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY EFFLUENTS

Twelve laboratories carried on a collaborative study to compare the odors of nine pure chemicals as sniffed from the bottle and as gas-liquid chromatography (GLC) effluents at three different concentrations. Odor intensities varied according to known psychophysical functions. There was some confusion between odors of sequentially eluted odorants, but it was not great and it could be reduced by improvements in design of GLC splitter ports, suggestions for which are made. Many of the problems of contamination of one odorant with another are the same involving mass spectrometric identification. The recognizability of an odor was not greatly impaired when the odorant was delivered from a GLC effluent port as compared with sniffing the pure compound. Although 126 judges generated 136 descriptor terms for the nine chemicals, the terms could be classified into 22 groups and there was good agreement among the 12 laboratories involved. © 1979, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.