What is it about the smell of creosote that makes it so addictive?I often find myself walking very slowly past a freshly creosoted fence.
When I smell creosote, it reminds me of when I was a boy, hanging out with friends on long summer days, walking along the railroad tracks exploring train tunnels and bridges. I think smell can bring back memories very strongly.
Just checking in to ruin your fun – Mr. Winkie says I do it all the time. I’m not sure what is so addicitive, but being the hazardous household materials geek that I am I looked up the materials safety data sheet (MSDS) for creosote. Here’s what I found:
http://www.hazard.com/msds2/f/93/bpwxf.html
Looks like inhalation of vapors can cause irritation of the respiratory tract, headache, dizziness, nausea, and high concentrations can put you in a coma. Also, it contains benzene, which OSHA and the International Agency for Research on Cancer think of as a human carcinogen.
Granted, the amount of vapors you actually inhale while walking past a fence are not likely to hurt you terribly, but don’t go buying a bottle to sniff! 
What the heck is creosote? The only time I’ve ever seen that word used was in reference to Mr. Creosote, the fat guy in “The Meaning of Life” who explodes after eating a wafer-thin mint.
Smells bringing back memory? You may ask Marcel Proust - he wrote the definitive work on the subject.
As to creosote - its a thick, black petroleum-like coating you put on wood (fences, railroad timbers, etc) to keep them from rotting. My memories of it - having to put about 1,000 fence posts in the ground (no gas auger either, we dug them by hand) while building a fence at my parents farm. The stuff is a powerful skin irritant and just ruins your clothes. It is also the nasty-stuff associated with many Superfund sites here in VA (timber processing is big business here in the state).
Mmmm, I’ll just have a steaming cup of lapsang souchong.
Creosote is a distilled coal tar product. The Creosote Council can probably answer any other questions; except why the smell is so good at triggering memories.
creosote is used medicinally in some cough mixtures (no, really)
Well, the odor is very distinctive (NPI). I’ve never encountered anything else that smelled like creosote. It seems likely that this distinctiveness is a factor in the memory association effect. The scent tends to be a stronger component of the associated memories, so it brings them back in a very focussed fashion.
I haven’t read Proust, but I may do so now. It would be interesting to see if he backs up my conjecture.
Get yourself a very comfortable chair. A Rememberance of Things Past runs to just shy of one million pages.
Like Tedster, the smell of creosote reminds me of my days of blissfully ignorant youth, walking along train tracks. It also reminds me of my father, since we put up a fence once, and dipped the post-ends in creosote.
Funny you should all be talking about creosote. I have been thinking a lot about this topic lately.
Let me explain. We have just purchased our first home, and there is sooo much to do. It’s 135 yrs old and needs much decorating and some renovating.
Amongst many other things on my to do list is to remove the railroad ties in the back yard. The former owners used them to define the back hedge and around the vegetable garden.
I can’t wait to be rid of the things. I know they are adding carcenogens to the soil and the things growing in it.
My question is this, after I pull these babies out of the soil (they’ve been laid lengthwise, two high, about a dozen in total) what should I be putting in the soil to nullify the effect of the creosote?
I thought of charcoal or ash maybe, but I’m just guessing.
Anyone out there have any suggestions?
Creosote is a bush found in the southwestern United States and parts of Mexico.
Must be a very large type edition. At one thousand pages per volume (which would be a large, War & Peace sized tome), we’re talking a 1000-volume opus. At 2 inches each, it would require 166.7 feet of shelving. I’ll have to see if my local Barnes & Noble has a “Remembrance…” section.
And Dire Wolf, it reminds me of my father, too, for the same reason. Cool.
I’m not suprised - my grandmother was given kerosene during the Spanish flu pandemic. However, I was never rude enough to ask if she ever tried a certain frat-house stunt involving a lit match.
Remediation isn’t my strong point, and I really hate to make a WAG – my suggestion would be to contact your local/regional environmental agency (Dept of Environmental Management or Natural Resources or the like) and ask them. You may get passed to a few different folks, but you’ll probably find the right person fairly quickly.
There are, apparently, three kinds of creosote: one made from distillation of wood tar (particularly beechwood tar), one made from a distillation of coal tar (the kind used as a wood preservative, and that we’re familiar with from railroad ties, etc.), and one that’s a tarry residue from burning wood, in particular on the walls of chimneys.
The creosote used in cough preparations like Creomulsion is the beechwood kind. According the MSDS for Creomulsion (available at the Creomulsion web site, http://www.creomulsion.com), it does not contain any hazardous materials, so apparently the beechwood creosote is fairly innocuous (though foul tasting, if my childhood memories of being given Creomulsion are accurate).
i should also point out that “Creosote” by Son Volt is one of my all-time favorite songs.
and of course not forgetting Mr Creosote - an obese, ultimately explosive character in the Monty Python film the meaning of life