Garbage left in the container for too long on a summer day, sewage or public toilet smell, obviously they all have a very specific smell, but their odor has not been classified as dangerous to human life.
However , the smell of the rare chemical thioacetone is really dangerous. This simple molecule, however, is difficult to manufacture because it can only be maintained at temperatures above -20°C. Once at this temperature, it clumps and forms a solid called trithioacetone.
The most famous story about the bad smell of thioacetone dates back to 1889. At that time, workers at a factory in the German city of Freiberg were trying to produce a simple but deadly chemical. And then they inadvertently create panic among the people. Their success resulted in ” an unpleasant smell that spread rapidly throughout a large area of town, causing many people to faint, vomit and have to be evacuated in panic “.
The same thing happened in 1967 when British researchers Victor Burnop and Kenneth Latham tried to use thioketon to create a new polymer. However, only for leaving a bottle of thioketon residue open for a moment. It made people who work in the building hundreds of meters away feel nauseous after smelling the smell.
According to scientists at the Eso research station: “We recently discovered an unexpected odor. In the initial experiment, the stopper was dropped from the bottle containing the residue and the parachute was disposed of immediately. but it still makes colleagues working in a building about 180 meters away feel nauseous and tired.”
In the early 1960s, when Professor Roland Mayer at the University of Technology Dresden, Germany set out to search for a group of aromatic sulfur-containing chemical compounds called thioketones, he knew about thioacetone’s foul-smelling properties, but he still surprised by its stench. He even described its scent as almost indescribable.
Chemical structure of thioacetone.
Interestingly, thioacetone is not a complex chemical, but no one seems to know exactly why it smells so bad. Sulfur is most likely the culprit, but why this compound smells so much worse than others is still a mystery that many scientists have not been able to figure out.
Pharmaceutical chemist Derek Lowe told Sciencemag: “It simply stinks. But it gives off a persistent smell and makes people unbearable. It causes many people who accidentally inhale it to stumble, hug, and hug. stomach and fled in terror. It was so dark that it made people suspect it came from evil supernatural forces.”
Over tens of thousands of years, we have been able to smell sulfur-containing substances in amounts of 1 part per billion or even 1 part per trillion, the equivalent of half a teaspoon of sugar in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. With thioacetone, our sense of smell is even more strongly affected, at least according to the researchers who participated in the experiment at the Eso Research Station in 1967.
They wrote: “Odors appeared despite the effect of dilution because the laboratory researchers did not perceive unpleasant odors. In the test, they divided other observers around the laboratory at approx. up to nearly 400 meters away and only a single drop of trithioacetone dripped onto the watch glass in the fume hood. The odor was detected within seconds.”
Worse yet, the scent of thioacetone is particularly long-lasting. That is to say, it can take days to disappear even in very small amounts. So perhaps you should not be curious about this smell if you do not want to have health problems.