Have you ever wondered about the accuracy of the descriptions in chemical manuals of what different compounds smell like? “Sure,” you say, “the book says that this smells like cheese, but does that really help me in my daily life?”
Well, worry no more. Dylan Stiles does the experiment so you don’t have to.
(If you haven’t responded to the poll question below, please consider it…)
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It seems to be smell week in the chemical blog world – we just had a stink-fest over at my site. That one concentrated more on the sulfur compounds, though, which cover the skunk-who-died-of-garlic-poisoning-being-cremated-in-a-tractor tire end of the spectrum. And for any given sulfur compound, the corresponding selenium analog probably smells even worse.
Dylan describes the organic acids accurately – lots of nose-wrinkling spoilage/armpit odors there. Then you’ve got your amines, which go from variations on spoiled fish all the way to compounds like (I’m not making these up) the noxious diamines putrescine and cadaverine.
And that’s not even mentioning the phosphines, phosphites, and pyridines, which are very vile indeed but have no easily referenced comparisons. They’re sui generis, which is probably a good thing.
I’m still waiting for Karl Sharpless to release a catalogue of the flavours of heavy metal organometallics.
I find sodium bicarbonate solution works very well against carboxylic acids that have made their way into ones’ hands. It would probably make a good body wash too.
I have the joy of working in the corner of the lab with the cyclopentadiene cracker. The stream of people attempting ferrocene preps has slowed to a halt based on the nose-eroding precedent of previous weeks. First smell I’ve come across that I can’t help but feel has a ‘gritty’ ‘texture’.