South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Life’s many stinks put to test
Minnesota man’s smell-measuring device has taken on a powerful role in a movement to recognize odor as a pollutant
SOUTH ST. PAUL,
Minn. — Chuck McGinley, a chemical engineer, stepped out of his car, eyed the smokestack of an animal processing plant rising above the treetops, and inhaled deeply. At first he smelled nothing except the faint, sweet fragrance of the nearby trees.
Suddenly, the wind picked up. “We have an oh-my-God smell!” McGinley exclaimed.
Immediately one of his colleagues pressed a Nasal Ranger to his nose. The 14-inch-long smell-measuring device, which looks like a cross between a radar gun and a bugle, is one of McGinley’s most significant inventions.
Using terms from one of McGinley’s other standard tools, an odor wheel, a chart akin to an artist’s color wheel that he has been fine-tuning for decades, the team described the stink. “Sour,” one person said. “Decay, with possibly some petroleum,” said another.
Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the smell disappeared.
Intuitively, humans know to avoid bad smells. Yet for a half-century, McGinley, 76, has returned again and again to society’s stinkiest sites, places very much like this one, in order to measure, describe and demystify smell.
From his unconventional lab in a Minnesota suburb, McGinley and his son
Mike have established an outsize influence over the measurement and understanding of odor. They have equipped scientists around the world with tools the elder McGinley invented, advised governments on odor regulations and empowered communities near smelly places to find a vocabulary for their complaints and a way to measure what their noses are telling them.
In many ways, the growing demand for McGinley’s services and instruments signals society’s heightened awareness of the power of odor and its potential to make people physically ill or diminish their quality of life. His inventions have taken on a powerful role in a movement to recognize odor as a pollutant, not merely an annoyance, worthy of closer study and perhaps tighter regulation.
“If somebody said, ‘I have an odor problem; where should I go?’ that would be
Chuck and Mike McGinley,” said Jacek Koziel, an agricultural engineer who studies odor at Iowa State University. Their methods provide policymakers and researchers with “hard evidence to make the case that odor is real and it affects people’s lives,” he said.
Of the human senses, smell is perhaps the most elusive yet powerful. In any given moment, it can be a time capsule, jerking us back to a half-forgotten past. Or it can linger, triggering feelings that cannot quite be placed or described.
Intuitively, it provides valuable warnings. A whiff of milk can immediately tell you if it is unsafe to drink. A sniff can tell you if your socks are clean. It has even become a diagnostic tool: Losing one’s sense of smell is a possible sign of COVID19 infection. “Our nose is our early warning that something is not good,” McGinley said.
A smell is, quite simply, a result of chemicals in the air, and the human nose is far better at detecting them than it often gets credit for. Some of the most recognizable and potent odors, like hydrogen sulfide (think rotten egg), can be sensed at even the tiniest concentrations, like 1 part per billion.
“If you were to map out the distance from New
York to Los Angeles, 1 part per billion would account for only a few inches along that route,” Koziel of Iowa State said.
Despite having the power to sicken, there are few laws in the United States to regulate odor. It makes up a significant portion of complaints to public agencies, including one-quarter of the complaints to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Yet there is debate over whether a smell can be inherently dangerous.
“It’s one thing to measure emissions, but odor is a sensation. Because it can be experienced so differently by so many people, it puts us in a bind about how we regulate,” said Pamela Dalton, a psychologist who studies odor perception at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “Any industry has the potential for off-site emissions, even a cookie factory,” she added.
However, there is a growing body of medical literature supporting the notion that odor can cause physical health problems. Research shows that people living near malodorous sites can suffer physiological symptoms including headaches, burning eyes and nausea as well as mental health challenges like depression and anxiety.
The decision not to regulate odor at the federal level dates to the 1970s. In a series of surveys, federal agencies found that half of respondents believed odor was a serious problem. But the Environmental Protection Agency ultimately decided that it would leave it to local governments to create odor nuisance laws, akin to noise ordinances.
Today, around a dozen states regulate odor, and various local governments have set up ordinances. But the system is patchy, and it has left disputes to be dealt with in the courts.
In an example from
2018, a North Carolina jury awarded neighbors of Smithfield Foods $473.5 million for “obnoxious, recurrent odors” originating from the company’s industrial hog farms. (In a statement, Smithfield said it had settled this and other similar cases for an undisclosed amount.)
But not everyone has the time or money to sue. And because smelly industries are often clustered in low-income areas, McGinley said, the problems can disproportionately affect minorities or poorer communities.
For centuries, measuring smells had a reputation akin to alchemy. In a 1914 commencement speech, inventor Alexander Graham Bell explained the importance of measurement to the advancement of science. Sound and light, he said, could be measured. But not smell.
McGinley’s idea for his own devices came during a vacation in Hawaii. He saw the Haleakala volcano and had a breakthrough: The conical shape might work well for a smell-measuring tool. His Nasal Ranger, more intuitive than the acrylic boxes with finger holes, requires little more than taking a big sniff and adjusting a dial until you no longer smell it.
“The Nasal Ranger is quantum leaps better than the original Scentometer,” said Dalton of the Monell Center. Scientists and startups are now working to develop electronic noses capable of measuring and identifying odors just as an actual nose can. But the technology is not there yet.