Human Senses 1. Smell and Taste (14 of 21)

Human Senses

At the Monell Chemical Senses Centre scientists are working on something far, far nastier.
They've spent the last 5 years deliberately trying to cerate the worst smell on Earth.
A smell so awful it could be used for crowd control.
Pam Dalton is in charge of the project.
How does a reaction to a mal odour develop?
What makes a bad odour bad?
ls it something experiences you've had in the presents of that odour?
ls it something that the odour tells you about it's source?
Pam and her team wanted to see whether they could create something totally harmless - that smelled so bad, that everyone on the planet would find it utterly revolting.

The first step was to find out what people reckoned were the nastiest smells?
Not to keen on sulphur - l don't like the smell of that, it's quite, in chemistry lab that was really not me.
There were some swamps l played in as a kid, ...there were some algae rotting in.
Certain types of vomit.
Saliva, spit, urgh.
lts probably going in to the toilets after he's been in there would be my guess.
Dead body smell.
Er it never go away.
You know that that smell never go away.
l've encountered that several times.
Erm, he's a cop, just so you know.
Freeze...
Everyone tends to find the smell of things like vomit, excrement and decomposing bodies, deeply unpleasant.
Oh not good whatever it is.
But it's only a few bad stinks that really get up our noses.
Fundamentally were not designed to be very sensitive to smells.