Emendata

Saint John of Madeira made a map of the smells that were bothering the population.

At the end of May, Saint João of Madeira woke up with the new that he would have at his disposal the Odoumap, a new tool to document, assess and control the occasional smells.

The collaboration of all the noses was required to improve the quality of the air and, consequently, quality of life.

By simply clicking online, the residents or visitors of the eight square kilometers territory of the country’s smallest county could access to a platform and submit their appraisal of the air with reference of the date, time and geographic location.

The yellow, green or red dots will rise on the screen to highlight the negative appraisals over the positive.

The innovative system of smell monitoring started to work in the beginning of June.

The assembly is talking about good support and has decided to extend the project until July of next year.

Not only that, but in the beginning of January it will include municipal schools, introducing them to the system and demonstrating how it works as a way of making the little ones more sensible towards the quality of the air that they breath.

The first results are collected and processed.

Between the 2nd of June and the 30th of November 260 observations were registered and the smells of rotting meat, fatty and nauseating, are the most felt and annoying smells.

From those 260 noses, 218 corresponding to the 83,8%, detected those smells.

In this evaluation, 62,4% of the people reported that those smells are “extremely bothering” and the 60,1% guaranteed that the smell had a “very strong” intensity.

The factory processing by-products of animal origin is not unrelated to this situation, and the assembly already asked the Portuguese Agency of Environment an inspection to the enterprise.

Which, meanwhile, promised to solve the technical problem that was causing the bad smells in the county of São João and surrenders by the end of this year