Human Responses to Environmental Odors

Book excerpt: Human Responses to Environmental Odors presents some of the approaches to the study of the human olfactory response. This book contains 11 chapters that describe the complexity in human olfaction. This text deals first with the sensory and physicochemical aspects of odor. These topics are followed by discussions on the sampling, transport, dispersal, odor intensities and preferences, and psychophysical scaling. The discussion then shifts to the applications of some previously slighted fundamentals, such as vapor pressure phenomena and the chemical stability of odorants in the atmosphere. Other chapters are devoted to community odor problems and annoyance reactions, combustion odors, and laser Raman spectroscopy. These chapters include odor measurement and control. This book is of great value to flavor scientists, chemists, physiologists, and behavioral scientists.