# Is there anything that is truly odorless? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 3, 2014, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695 "2014-08-03T03:12:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![buddy431](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@buddy431](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddy431)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/21 "2014-08-03T15:18:14Z")
Something with essentially no vapor pressure. Clean glass, diamond, pretty much any mineral. Yes, if you grind them up I suppose you might be able to “smell” something, but if they’re just sitting there, there’s really nothing to smell. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/22 "2014-08-03T18:38:41Z")
This is one of the tropes that bugs me. Some being with enhanced senses (mutant, vampire etc) smells something. A normal human says ‘But that is odorless’. Enhanced character responds ‘maybe to you.’. A substance which science has called odorless can’t be smelled if you fill an olympic sized swimming pool with it. I think the confusion comes from other animals being able to hear sounds and see parts of the spectrum we cannot. Bats can hear frequencies much higher than we can. Elephants can hear frequencies much lower than we can. There are animals that can see ultraviolet light. But I don’t know of an animal that can smell O2, nitrogen, or Iocane powder. ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/23 "2014-08-03T21:33:04Z")
The inside of your nose. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/24 "2014-08-03T21:54:50Z")
> [@Flywheel](#): > > The inside of your nose. Not so. I have experience a “false odor” sensation, my doctors believes it is some slight infection or discharge in my nasal passages. I detect it intermittently, and after a few months it passes. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/25 "2014-08-03T22:01:11Z")
> [@buddy431](#): > > Something with essentially no vapor pressure. Clean glass, diamond, pretty much any mineral. Yes, if you grind them up I suppose you might be able to “smell” something, but if they’re just sitting there, there’s really nothing to smell. I might be wrong, but I think evaporation is a statistical thing. Meaning that sure, diamond has a boiling point, but even at room temperature, it could be evaporating the occasional particle. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/26 "2014-08-03T22:14:05Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > This is one of the tropes that bugs me. Some being with enhanced senses (mutant, vampire etc) smells something. A normal human says ‘But that is odorless’. Enhanced character responds ‘maybe to you.’. > > A substance which science has called odorless can’t be smelled if you fill an olympic sized swimming pool with it. Your objection here doesn’t make sense. When science classifies something as odourless, it’s most likely in the context of normal human perception. I.e. Carbon Monoxide is odourless to humans. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible for some other thing to detect it. Carbon Monoxide is not odourless to an electronic CO detector, for example. > [@](#): > > I think the confusion comes from other animals being able to hear sounds and see parts of the spectrum we cannot. Bats can hear frequencies much higher than we can. Elephants can hear frequencies much lower than we can. There are animals that can see ultraviolet light. There’s no confusion. Smell is not a spectral range thing like sight or hearing. All an enhanced being needs to be able to smell things odourless to normal humans, is additional types of olfactory receptors to detect it. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/27 "2014-08-03T22:52:32Z")
Smell, even more so than other senses, is not just a physical property, but the result of interaction between the substance in question and our own bodies. In order to smell something, you need two things: first, some number of molecules have to travel from the thing to your nose. Second, some of those molecules need to be able to bind and activate receptor proteins. So something can be odorless in two ways: either it doesn’t send out any (or many) molecules into the atmosphere (hence all the “vapor pressure” arguments), or it can fail to activate any receptors in your nose. However, receptors are proteins, subject to variation and natural selection, and so the potential range of possible receptors is pretty large. So now we get into definition problems. Is something odorless if only 1% of humans have the right receptor shape to pick it up? What if humans can’t detect it, but dogs can? Or insects? What if something is odorless until one day a mutant is born that can detect it? Was it correct to call it odorless all along? It’s sort of the equivalent of the tree falling in the forest. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/28 "2014-08-03T22:58:28Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > \<\< clipped \>\> > It’s sort of the equivalent of the tree falling in the forest. Or in interstellar space. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/29 "2014-08-04T06:26:30Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Iron has a smell\* so I’d guess that steel with enough iron in it would smell as well. Granted, I’m not saying it has a strong smell, but if you put your nose right up to it iron is what most people are thinking of when they say something smells or tastes metallic. Phosgene gas in seriously minute amounts ‘smells’ [actually a combination of smell and taste, it is decidedly odd] like when you hold a handful of hot sweaty pennies. A sort of odd metallic oily copper sense [as I said, an odd combination of taste, mouthfeel and smell.] Some people pick it up like a new mown hay sort of smell, and it is a straw yellow [chlorine is more chartreuse] so if you see a thin scattered low lying ‘fog’ that is slightly straw yellow, run the other way. [I still have the scars left from the lesions from phosgene on my forearms and neck.] Somewhere out in the barn I have a thing that looks like a pan pipe or funky harmonica that is a series of sight tubes that you look through to give you the concentration of the phosgene in a cloud of gas, it was apparently issued in WW1. [URL=“[http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/](http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/)”] ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/30 "2014-08-04T08:04:21Z")
Your own nose. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![PurpleClogs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f04885/32.png) [@PurpleClogs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PurpleClogs)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/31 "2014-08-04T15:42:18Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > So something can be odorless in two ways: either it doesn’t send out any (or many) molecules into the atmosphere (hence all the “vapor pressure” arguments), or it can fail to activate any receptors in your nose. . So is there technology to detect the molecules given off by a substance? I guess if the result were zero, then that would be truly odorless. Though I could imagine contamination would make it difficult. Glass could smell like the cleaner used on it, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/32 "2014-08-04T17:19:32Z")
I’ve seen and heard things about artificial odor detectors, but they’re nowhere near as good as, say, a bloodhound. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/33 "2014-08-04T23:07:01Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Smell, even more so than other senses, is not just a physical property, but the result of interaction between the substance in question and our own bodies. In order to smell something, you need two things: first, some number of molecules have to travel from the thing to your nose. Second, some of those molecules need to be able to bind and activate receptor proteins. But there are some things that won’t bind to proteins. Inert gases, for example. Helium, neon, argon, etc. don’t bind to anything, so it’d be impossible to smell those. Almost as inert is nitrogen, N[sub]2[/sub]. With three chemical bonds between the two atoms, it takes either a lot of energy or a special enzyme to get nitrogen to combine with other things. Since it’s extremely unlikely that an organism will produce the enzyme just to smell it, for all intents and purposes nitrogen is unsmellable. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/34 "2014-08-04T23:51:51Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Iron has a smell\* so I’d guess that steel with enough iron in it would smell as well. Granted, I’m not saying it has a strong smell, but if you put your nose right up to it iron is what most people are thinking of when they say something smells or tastes metallic. Iron was discovered because someone smelt it. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2014, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/35 "2014-08-05T00:03:25Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > But there are some things that won’t bind to proteins. Inert gases, for example. Helium, neon, argon, etc. don’t bind to anything, so it’d be impossible to smell those. I think it all depends on whether we are limiting ourselves to extant organisms on Earth, or if we are to allow hypothetical biologies - if the latter, we could posit senses analogous to that of smell, that work by different mechanisms such as ionisation, fluorescence or some other physical mechanism. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2014, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/36 "2014-08-05T02:08:06Z")
Just to be clear here – everyone is throwing around the term, I assume jokingly – but Iocane powder is not a real thing. It was made up by the author of _A Princess Bride_. Right? ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2014, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/37 "2014-08-05T02:51:33Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Just to be clear here – everyone is throwing around the term, I assume jokingly – but Iocane powder is not a real thing. It was made up by the author of _A Princess Bride_. Right? He merely translated the story… There are very few people around who can read the original, being in Florinese and all. To the OP - I am not sure if its just internet legend or not - but I thought Febreeze in the original formula was just that - odorless. ---
**Author:** ![Flander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8c91f0/32.png) [@Flander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flander)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2014, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/38 "2014-08-05T03:11:52Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Iron was discovered because someone smelt it. 😃 There are many things odorless to humans. And we humans have invented detectors to “smell” things like carbon monoxide. But at what point does the detector stop being a “smell” detector? Vaporized compounds can be detected, so as already mentioned, something that doesn’t produce a vapor of itself by ejecting a particle to be detected could be odorless. Black holes maybe. 😉 And what about [synesthesia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia)? Someone could look at something normally odorless but have that crossed with a particular, identifiable smell? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2014, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/39 "2014-08-05T06:09:28Z")
> [@simster](#): > > To the OP - I am not sure if its just internet legend or not - but I thought Febreeze in the original formula was just that - odorless. I believe it contains a substance that inhibits the human sense of smell, so in part, your stuff smells fresher because you can’t smell anything at all. Sweet violets also contain something like this. It’s said that you can only smell the first one, before (temporarily) losing the sense of smell. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2014, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695/40 "2014-08-05T06:14:16Z")
I guess that would be a legitimate category of odpurlessness though - things that actively prevent you from smelling them. An atomic explosion, for example. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-that-is-truly-odorless/694695.md?page=3)