Abstract
Gas odorants are added to the city gas in case of gas leak to be detected. For the gas odor it is essential that not only the customer can notice the smell but also they realize the odor comes from gas leak. In this study, experiments were carried out to clarify the characteristics of gas odor. In the experiments, participants sniffed and evaluated 13 offensive odors, and rated similarity to their image of gas odor and evaluated the odors by 15 pairs of polar adjectives. The participants were classified into two groups from similarity. One group could distinguish the gas odor and the other group could not distinguish it. Moreover after examining the characteristics of both groups, we made out most people perceived that “the actual gas odor” is similar to their image of gas odor”, but some people evaluate the gas odor differently from their gas odor image.
