• Question: what is the smelliest thing that you have been working with

    Asked by anon-258692 to Zoe, Will, Tiffany, Tanya, Suwanie, Subha, Steve, Spyridon on 14 Jul 2020.
    • Photo: Tiffany Chan

      Tiffany Chan answered on 14 Jul 2020:

      Thiols (compounds with the group -SH in them – ie, they contain sulphur)! They smell a bit like rotten eggs… not great.

    • Photo: Will Breeze

      Will Breeze answered on 15 Jul 2020:

      Triethylamine (C2H5)3N, Imagine you left old fish fingers in the sun for a week and you wouldn’t be far off.

Comments

  • Photo: Fred

    Fred commented on :

    During my PhD another of the graduate students worked on Selenium organic compounds as ligands for transition metals they i think are even more smell than sulphur ones

  • Photo: Katherine

    Katherine commented on :

    During my PhD I worked with a compound that is a lachrymator – that means it makes your eyes water. I wasn’t affected by it but my boss came into the lab one day and had to run out because he was crying so hard because the chemical was in the air. The really scary thing? It didn’t really have a smell.
    The other interesting and possibly scary thing about some chemicals is that some can be present in levels dangerous for humans before the human nose can detect (smell) them.
    Generally chemicals with sulfur, selenium and nitrogen can be stinky but also some of the carboxylic acids – I used one that smelled like cat sick.

  • Photo: Alex

    Alex commented on :

    In the oil industry nothing beats the smell of a sulphurous Marine oil. You can imagine the worse stink bomb and multiply that up x10 and you still do not come close.

  • Photo: Andy

    Andy commented on :

    Benzyl Mercaptan, 2 Benzyl Pyridine, Thiophene and Tellurium compounds spring to mind in course of undergraduates work as does copious amounts of pyridine used in synthesis of Nickel Pyridine complexes which were used for DGA.

  • Photo: Rachael

    Rachael commented on :

    I once worked with some samples of “municipal solid waste” or processed household bin waste – that was pretty stinky!

  • stevethomas commented on :

    Copper ore in the form of copper sulphide – it partially oxidises to sulphur dioxide which smells like rotten eggs.

  • Photo: Kat

    Kat commented on :

    Sulphur! Smells like eggs!

  • Photo: Martin

    Martin commented on :

    a family of amine compounds were terrible to work with. A single grain of material spilt in the lab would leave an awful (fishy) smell. I later found out that these amines are one of the chemicals that the human nose is super sensitive to and it required the lab to have a washdown in dilute acid to neutrilize and remove