Question: Has odor ever been used against an industry in court?

stevie is asking a question about general
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by stevie | December 07, 2018 20:07 | #17834


I'm interested to hear if odor has ever been used against an industry in court. If so, how, and what evidence was collected for it?



4 Comments

No , and yes in some cases ..... but that is a great question

Can you explain more? This has been coming up a good bit lately!

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Odor is part of nuisance law.

Since this question was asked, many resources including @imvec's "Odor Log 1.0" have been gathered on https://publiclab.org/odor

For your odor logs to be used in court, you may have to sign a written statement or affidavit.

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People can directly testify about odors, providing 1) narrative accounts of impact to health, to family and social interactions, and to the use and enjoyment of property, and 2) because "smells can't be photographed," photos of related phenomena such as flypaper traps: https://thefern.org/2019/12/rural-north-carolinians-won-multimillion-dollar-judgments-against-the-worlds-largest-hog-producer-will-those-cases-now-be-overturned/. Decades of environmental justice struggles in North Carolina provide leadership on this issue. Give a look at the overview here in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, which is funded by the federal government, and has covered many odor and EJ issues: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.121-a182. This article covers work by beloved EJ advocate Steve Wing who testified in court as a scientist many times about his research findings on human health. This article also points out gaps in the domain of agencies regulating #cafo and the agencies regulating human health which allow injustice to flourish unchecked, requiring people to litigate.

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