Stink Bomb's Away

Danielle Jackson

To help the U.S. Department of Defense develop an odor bomb so powerful that it will clear crowds, scientists have tested and approved apparently two of the worst smells imaginable — human waste and rotting garbage.

According to scientists, they were supposed to create a smell so foul that it would cause shortness of breath, nausea and outright panic. Human waste and rotting garbage topped the list with the most adverse reactions, according to Pamela Dalton, a researcher with the Philadelphia-based Monell Chemical Senses Center. Burning hair and vomit actually were more bearable.

To recreate rotting garbage odors in the lab, researchers combined a variety of sulfur compounds. Human waste odors were formed from a mixture of a chemical called skatole with fatty acids and sulfurs.

“Our testers said these were probably the worst things they had ever smelled,” Dalton says. “When we asked them how long they would sit in a room that smelled like this, they said, ‘not at all.’”
Source: Yahoo! News