Sorry if this is an IMHO type question I am hoping it has at least some factual answers.
On my route home from work there is one place (with some reasonably dense surrounding plantlife) that absolutely REEKS of glue. Enough to make me choke. The smell is there every day.
Assuming there is a regular meeting of gluesniffing youngsters there hours earlier, could the smell last long enough to still be there when I walk through in the morning?
Or is something growing there that smells of glue?
IME, the smell of glue is mostly from the toluene used as a solvent. (Do they still use toluene? I haven’t built a model since the '70s.) Perhaps what you’re smelling is a solvent, rather than glue. I’ve never heard of a plant that smells like that.
Ya know, what pops into my head is that some processes use toluene, so maybe somebody’s illegally dumping that day’s used toluene in the bushes?
Found a fascinating list here of businesses that use toluene. Any of them ring a bell?
I think you found a meth lab, give the police a tip.
It’s very unlikely you’ve found a meth lab, since meth is not at all popular in the UK and extremely rare.
However, certain blends of pitch have aromatic compounds that smell very much like glue. There’s a place up the road from me that’s redoing their roof and i get pretty high walking past there on the way to work!
Most likely, though, is that it’s just some chemical from a nearby building, bleach/drain cleaner/etc, that’s been flushed down the drain and has collected on the sides of a nearby drain.