A few standards dealing with odours from different materials and developed by the ASTM have been recently published. The Standard Practice for Evaluating Foreign Odors and/or Flavors from Paper Packaging has been updated to the last version. Also the Standard Guide for Measuring and Tracking Performance of Assessors on a Descriptive Sensory Panel, and the Standard Guide for Selecting and Using Scales for Sensory Evaluation.
The US standard ASTM E619 that deals with practices for evaluating odours in paper packaging was first publised in 1995 and it was revised in 2003 and 2009. This time there are some minor changes on the title and the text that needed to be done and now the version E619-17 is finally available for purchase.
The standard Guide for Measuring and Tracking Performance of Assessors on a Descriptive Sensory Panel has been also published in December with the code E3000 - 17. This guide is meant to be used with and applied to individual trained descriptive assessors. The procedures recommended in this guide can be used by the panel leader to periodically appraise the performance of individual descriptive assessors. Tracking assessor performance provides information as to the quality of the data being generated. Performance information may be used to decide whether to use the data to interpret product profiles. Monitoring assessor performance will enable the panel leader to identify retraining needs or to identify assessors who are not performing well enough to continue participating on a panel.
There is also a new standard for selecting and using scales for sensory evaluation with the code ASTM E3041 - 17 and published a couple of days ago. This one deals with the scales that are used to record human responses to physical stimuli rather than measuring physical entities. Many types of rating scales already exist and have been used in the above fields. Specific rating scales each have their own properties, advantages, and disadvantages. Some rating scales are intended for specific applications, while others have broader applications. Some rating scales have been extensively studied and modeled and have well-established properties.
If you find this article interesting, you might also be interested in these articles:
- The New Standard ASTM WK60885 for Sensory Evaluation of Small Devices
- New Approved ASTM Standards for sensory evaluation of food and beverage
- How a European Standard about odours was born in 1991
- ASTM E1909 - Standard Guide for Time-Intensity Evaluation of Sensory Attributes reapproved
- The ASTM Committee E18 on Sensory Evaluation will be holding a new meeting in New Orleans, LA US
