Odour nuisance regulation in France

French regulation on industrial odour nuisance originates from the law of 19 July 1976 on classified installations, now incorporated into the Environmental Code (articles L.511-1 to L.517-2). The Air Quality Law of 30 December 1996 goes further by explicitly including odour nuisance in the legal definition of air pollution.

Facilities likely to cause nuisance to neighbours — factories, farms, waste treatment sites, biogas plants — fall under the Classified Installations for Environmental Protection (ICPE) regime. The nomenclature includes roughly 200 categories, split into three regimes depending on the size and hazard level of the activity: declaration, registration, or authorisation.

For facilities subject to authorisation, the prefectural permit can set a maximum odour emission rate the operator must not exceed.

For many categories of classified installations, the reference odour threshold is 5 ouE/m³, not to be exceeded more than 2% of the time at the site boundary — roughly 175 hours per year. This threshold relies on standardised olfactometry measurements (EN 13725).

• Order of 2 February 1998 general requirements for authorised classified installations.
• Order of 17 June 2021 authorised biogas (anaerobic digestion) facilities. — See the biogas plants page
• ICPE category 2760 waste storage and treatment. — See the waste page
• Ministerial orders of 27 December 2013 cattle, pig, and poultry farms. — See the livestock farming page

• Administrative route reporting to the regional environmental authority or prefecture, which can lead to an inspection, formal notice, or sanctions.
• Civil route abnormal neighbourhood nuisance allows for compensation even when the facility complies with its administrative permit — a principle confirmed by French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) case law.
• Criminal route reserved for the most serious cases (clear environmental offences).

A single report is hard to act on with an authority or a court. A structured history — time-stamped, geolocated, categorised by odour type — provides usable factual evidence to document a recurring nuisance, whether to support a request to the regional authority or to build a neighbourhood nuisance case.