Search

Odor analysis by olfactometry relies on the use of n-butanol as a reference compound for standardizing the selection of human panelists. This requires that human sensitivity towards n-butanol is correlated to sensitivity towards other odorants as well as complex odor mixtures. However, there is limited evidence in the literature of such correlations. In this work, datasets from three odor laboratories were investigated in order to clarify this. All panels routinely analyzed n-butanol and H 2 S samples. Two of the laboratories analyzed samples from pig production or industry, whereas one laboratory determined odor threshold values for typical pig production odorants. Non-significant correlations were observed in most cases and odor threshold values for structurally related compounds were not well correlated. The work presented strongly indicates that the sensitivity of odor panelists towards n-butanol is not well transferred to other odorants or odor samples. Furthermore, minimization of variance by using n-butanol is not transferable to other odorants or environmental samples. Thus, the harmonization of human panelists for odor analysis based on n-butanol does not appear to result in harmonization with respect to other odorants or odor samples.

Two different humic acids (HA) and a fulvic acid (FA) were chemically immobilized to a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) silica column material. The immobilization was performed by binding amino groups in HA/FA to the free aldehyde group in glutardialdehyde attached to the silica gel. The HPLC column materials were compared with a blank column material made by applying the same procedure but without immobilizing HA or FA. Also, a column was made by binding carbonyl groups in HA to amino groups attached to the silica gel. The humic substances were selected to secure appropriate variation of their structural features. The retention factors of 45 polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAC) to the four columns were determined by HPLC. The advantage of the technique is a large number of compounds can easily be studied. The binding procedure does not appear to cause a drastic selection between the HA molecules. The k' values obtained for the two Aldrich HA columns agree in general reasonably. The retention or sorption of the compounds increased with the size of the PAC and the number of lipophilic substituents, but decreased when polar substituents were present. The PAC retention was much stronger to the two HA columns than to the FA and blank column, both for hydrophobic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and the polar PAC. Other factors impacting the PAC binding may be specific interactions with HA and the ionic strength of the aqueous phase. The technique has been applied to do direct determinations of Koc.

In order to achieve a high quality on the coding work according to the ICD-10 in Norway, we have selected a new method for developing a Norwegian version. The objective is to arrive at a version which will ensure safe and easy coding. Standardization of nomenclature/terminology has been emphasized, leaving the users in no doubt as to what is the preferred terminology. Separate auxiliary applications for the ICD-10 are developed to make search operations more efficient in the coding work. For each code, a selected amount of supplementary information is given, enabling the user to check, on a medical basis, whether or not the selected code is the correct one. The ICD-10 will appear in SGML format, a markup language which, to our knowledge, has not been used for medical classification systems before. This format is well-suited for the development of multilingual classification systems, a fact which WHO should consider when they now start to develop the ICD-11.