Do Europeans and Koreans use mothballs more than Americans do?

Factual Questions
1

I feel like this question is going to come off as somehow offensive to somebody, so let me preface by saying that it’s not my intention to do so.

Growing up, my best friend’s family was from Russia. And their house smelled like mothballs. His clothes smelled like mothballs. All their stuff smelled faintly of mothballs. I didn’t mind the smell, but I noticed it.

Nobody else I knew, besides my great grandmother (who was from Greece) had this mothball smell. It just was not something I smelled on the everyday people I had contact with.

We had a few French foreign exchange students at my high school. And they also smelled like mothballs. Again, it didn’t bother me, but I took notice of it.

Later, in my sophomore year of college, a visiting Korean teacher had a temporary room in my floor in the residence hall. And this room smelled insanely mothball-y. So strong that the whole hallway leading up to it smelled like mothballs all the time. I was walking by this hallway one night with some friends on a routine return-to-our-rooms-after-smoking-weed-in-the-alley-outside walk. Someone asked out loud, “Why does it always smell like mothballs over here?”

Now, one interesting factoid about me is that when I’m stoned (well, was…I don’t really smoke weed anymore) I sometimes fabricate information off the cuff and state it as fact. And in this particular instance, I decided to be the know-it-all and respond to the guy’s question about the mothballs.

I said, “Because he’s Korean, and in Korea they have a big problem with moths because they wear more stuff made of wool.”

I had no idea if this was true or not. I still have no idea if it’s true or not. But it sounded reasonable at the time. Later I started wondering about it. Most of the European people I’ve known in my life did seem to have a faint mothball smell. Let it be known that I am basing this primarily off of a very small sample: My Greek grandmother, the French exchange students, my Russian friend, and the Korean teacher. So I’ll be the first to admit that there are flaws in my reasoning.

But then I realize that I’ve never known an American-born person who smelled of mothballs or whose house did. Not one. Yet all the mothbally-smelling people I’ve known have been from out of the country.

So is there indeed a greater use of mothballs in Europe or Asia than there is in America?

2

And I know that Korea is not in Europe. :smack:

3

I lived in Korea for 11 years and never even saw a mothball. I don’t even know what a mothball is supposed to smell like. We don’t wear more stuff made of wool - we’re not a particularly cold country. I find it odd that you would voice such an assumption after meeting a grand total of one Korean. Maybe it was the room and not the person that was the problem. Or maybe that one Korean happened to have a thing for mothballs.

4

OK, now that I think about it, the Korean teacher had actually lived in England for a year before coming here. So that would make it 4 people who had come from Europe who smelled like mothballs.

Still a small sample, and an inconclusive one, so it probably means nothing.

5

Well then go get a moth and two pair of tweezers.

6

Why would you need two pairs of tweezers?

7

My mother in law is from England but mostly raised in Canada and moved to the U.S. as an adult. She is probably the youngest person I have ever met to use mothballs liberally and also to wear clothes that smell like them as well. I was a little freaked out the first time my now wife went out smelling like them.

8

One for each hind leg, of course. Don’t you want to smell the mothballs?