Good and bad chemical smells, list yours

[latentheat]

Good

 

cinnamaldehyde: Great smell. I put some cinnamon bark in water and boiled it to fill the house with wonderful vapors of this aromatic aldehyde the other day. My mother, for once, did not object.

 

vanillin: People look at me strange when I sniff vanilla extract.

 

dilute ozone: Our hot tub has a corona discharge ozonator. I get a whiff of the gas every time I open the lid.

 

dilute chloroform: Working with this is pleasant. However, it becomes nasty as your nose approaches the container in which it is in.

 

ethanol: I always sniff my glass of wine before I drink it. Lovely smell.

 

toluene: This is pleasant to work with, eg when marking something with spray paint.

 

 

Bad

 

ethanoic acid: Vinegar, ugh, one of the nastiest things I've ever smelled.

 

hydrogen sulfide: I think most people would agree about this being bad.

 

bromine: Possibly the worst smell ever.

 

methanal: Fetal pig dissection was unbearable because of this chem

 

hydrochloric acid: Nasty, corrosive. Just disgusting.

 

ammonia: very annoying.

[EwenM]

Good: Ethyne (acetylene) smells of lychees

 

Bad: Butanoic acid smells of vomit. Interestingly, you can get rid of the smell of vomit by scrubbing with sodium hydrogencarbonate (a weak alkali) which seems to neutralise things like butanoic acid.

[raivo]

Bad:

H2S,

polyamide decomposition products,

nitrogen oxides

 

Good:

not easy to tell because all smells we know frome everyday life are due of some chemicals. There are lot of smells that are good if not too strong and bad if conc of fumes is high. HCl for example. Generally i do not like smells of chemicals but various essencial oils smell trully good.

[Etacude]

Perhaps one of the most disgusting class of chemicals is mercaptan - sulphur-based organic molecules. Most of them smell rotten of every sort of food imaginable. For example, methanethiol (or methyl mercaptan) smells like a rotten vegetable.

 

One of the most pleasant smell class of chemicals would be esters - these give fruity smells. In fact, ripe fruits that give characteristic sweet smells are due to the presence of esters.

 

__________________

http://www.etacude.com

Education in Science

[budullewraagh]

Bad:

mercaptans, organoselenols/tellurols

hydrogen chalcogenides, (with exception of oxide)

hydrogen pnictides

hydrogen chloride

sulfur dioxide

oleum

most alcohols

butanoic acid

ammonia

ozone

 

Good:

most esters

ethanoic acid at low concentration

vanillin

[YT2095]

bad: disulpher dichloride, butanic acid, cyano acrylate (when heated), formaldehyde, and whatever chem(s) are responsible for ANY rotten vegetable matter.

 

Good: Conc Nitric acid (dangerous but smells "clean" and sweetish), 1,1,1 trichloroethylene, glycerly trinitrate (in small doses), alkyl nitrates, that chem in indellible felt marker pens, petrol (gasoline), diethyl ether, paxolin when hot (old PCB boards).

 

there`s many others but I wanna leave room for someone else too

[jdurg]

Bad: Chlorine, putrescine, cadaverine, amyl alcohol, most organic amines, skatole, thioesters, arsine, bromine, osmium tetroxide, hydrogen sulfide, sulfuric acid, acetic acid, sulfur oxides, acetone, ammonia.

 

Good: Hydrogen cyanide, ethyl acetate, benzene, toluene, nitric acid, iodine, methanol, ethanol, diethyl ether, octane, cyanoacrylate, phosphorus oxides, most simple small chain organic esters, perchloric acid (I don't know why, but I like the smell of it as it's a bit 'different' than the bad chlorine smell), xylene.

[budullewraagh]

jdurg, you've smelled osmium tetraoxide?

[jdurg]

Yeah, I got a whiff of it in one of my analytical labs in college. I forget the exact details of the lab, but we were instructed to keep the small vial inside the fume hood and to not get any of it on our skin. Even though the fume hood was working quite well, if you got close enough to the opening of the hood you could get a tiny whiff of the stuff. It REALLY smells bad. It's a very unique, but very bad odor that's pretty difficult to describe. All I know is that I would not want to be anywhere near a vial of the stuff that isn't inside of a fume hood. It also makes me very thankful that my solid osmium pellets don't oxidize at all unlike their powdered bretheren.

 

(Now that I think about it, I think the lab had to do with fingerprint analysis so it was probably my forensics lab as opposed to my analytical lab).

[Aspirin]

Good

 

Chlorine

Isopropyle Alcohol

 

 

Bad

 

Ammonia

SO2

H2S

Acetone

[DQW]

Bad: ... bromine...

I hope you're not sniffing too much of that one either !

[jdurg]

Hehe. Nope. It's just another one of those chemicals where once you get a small whiff of the stuff, you never forget it. (Just like HCN and Arsine).

[YT2095]

I agree with aspirin, isopropyl alcohol is a pleasant smell too, medi-wipes and tape head cleaner

 

jdurg HCN does smell quite nice too I must admit, and for some Strange reason always makes me feel hungry afterwards?

[budullewraagh]

forgot to mention pyridine, etc.

 

also, i read once that an ever so slight exposure to hydrocinnamic acid results in an awful smell that lasts for weeks, but i dont know how true that is

[YT2095]

I`m guessing here that since hydrocinnamic acid is an organic compound that it probably floods receptors leaving a lasting effect, a bit like calcium lockup on the tongue from capsciacin "over exposure"?

 

Glider would probably know

 

and to keep this on topic, Ozone is positively DREADFULL! I get such a headache from even small doses I`m ready to top myself!, it`s well nasty!

[Guest hsquared688]

i am quite particular to the smell 0f new cars, what is that smell? really.

[YT2095]

i am quite particular to the smell 0f new cars, what is that smell? really.

 

if you mean the sort with leather interiors I`m SOooooo with ya on that one! same as the smell in a leather store, or a new leather jacket, maybe it`s Dry Cleaning fluid?

 

as for NON leather cars, it`ll be a massive combination of many different smells, I love the smell of new electronics and some plastics too, and of course you`ll get all of these in a new car and more, I`de hazzard that it`s no ONE particular smell.

 

My Opinion.

[jdurg]

Mmmmm....... Ozone. I completely forgot how much I abhorr that smell! It's that odd smell you find when you're in the X-Ray room of a hospital. Just the slightest hint of Ozone really gives me the creeps as it reminds me of having to go into the back, dark corners of a hospital basement to get x-rays done, and the pain associated with the broken bones that required the x-rays. I always get the heebie-jeebies when I smell ozone due to those memories.

[jdurg]

if you mean the sort with leather interiors I`m SOooooo with ya on that one! same as the smell in a leather store' date=' or a new leather jacket, maybe it`s Dry Cleaning fluid?

 

as for NON leather cars, it`ll be a massive combination of many different smells, I love the smell of new electronics and some plastics too, and of course you`ll get all of these in a new car and more, I`de hazzard that it`s no ONE particular smell.

 

My Opinion.[/quote']

 

NOTHING beats the smell of new electronics. I always remember as a kid getting a new videogame and spending hours just getting a whiff of the new electronics smell. Same thing when I built my computer. I must have have spent hours getting a whiff of all the new electronics. Dear god I'm such a geek.

[latentheat]

Wow, I guess my liking the smell of ozone is odd. Too bad it destroys the lungs.

 

I forgot some. I also hate sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and acetone. I like menthol.

[YT2095]

NOTHING beats the smell of new electronics. I always remember as a kid getting a new videogame and spending hours just getting a whiff of the new electronics smell. Same thing when I built my computer. I must have have spent hours getting a whiff of all the new electronics. Dear god I'm such a geek.

 

I gotta be just as geeky then (is there such a word?), one of the ways I take "pulls" (second hand electronic parts) is to blowtorch the underside of a PCB and tap it with a screwdriver over a box so all the parts fall out into it, the old Paxolin boards have the best smell, you need the mid 70`s types for best effect as before that the pcb used wrap posts and bent radials and axials before soldering (they needed to be done manualy), the mid 70`s used paxolin AND flow solder, so the parts just drop out when the joints have heated, I`ve stayed a little longer than needed on a blank section of board just to take a sniff

 

I think I know why I like the smell so much, but it`s still a bit Sad to do it deliberately!

 

so,,, we were talking about Geeky? LOL

[Lance]

Wow' date=' I guess my liking the smell of ozone is odd. Too bad it destroys the lungs.

 

I forgot some. I also hate sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and acetone. I like menthol.[/quote']

 

Ozone only destroys the lungs in high concentrations but is detectable in very low concentrations. The same is true for many of the other chemicals on this list

[YT2095]

screw the lungs, why the head ache? or am I the only one that ever gets this from reasonably low concs?

 

and does it smell vaguely reminiscent of Chlorine gas to anyone?

[Lance]

screw the lungs' date=' why the head ache? or am I the only one that ever gets this from reasonably low concs?

 

and does it smell vaguely reminiscent of Chlorine gas to anyone?[/quote']

 

I don't get headaches and I don't think it smells reminiscent of Chlorine gas.

 

I think it smells nice and clean and slightly sweet.

[YT2095]

you git!