When driving near Garden City, Kansas at the height of tourist season in the summer of '94, my family had the unfortunate experience of finding out that the only campground with a vacany was directly downwind from a large cattle feedlot. We’ve never been back to Garden City.
When I was a Paramedic, we were called by the Police after the Mailman noticed a pile and was suspicious.
After booting the door, the Officer blew chow, and I called for an engine, only because I wanted air packs.
Never perform this maneuver prior to lunch. You’ll want to wash your toenails afterward, it is that stinky.
You know, this is exactly what I do! For some reason I get the association of ‘funny’ with ‘bad smell’. I guess its not so much the smell itself that is funny, but seeing other people’s reactions to it…
Its like when a person farts, and doesn’t claim it, just to sit back and supress all the laughter from witnessing the suffering of his/her cohorts. Yeah, my mother’s like that :mad:
According to some, “Ain’t nothin stronga than the oda of mendacity.”
Passed my truck over a skunk once.
Didn’t hit it, but scared it into spraying my truck.
I was on my way to work, I had a headache, nausea, etc. We could smell the stink inside the building from where my vehicle was parked in the lot.
Took me weeks to get rid of that smell.
The clarifier at the Milwaukee Sewage Treatment Plant. Except the clarifier hadn`t been in operation for several months. ALL the shit and collected debris from the sewage system had been fermenting in this huge basin (60 feet in diameter by 15 feet deep) for the whole time. It actully had a very thick layer on top by this time that could almost support the weight of a human. Tall weeds were growing out of it. Some poor bastards had to clean the thing out with buckets and high pressure water. I had to perform some electrical tasks nearby. I guarranty this, few people on this planet will ever smell anything like this. Not as pungent as rotting flesh, but very heavy, and you knew when you smelled it that even the smell was bad for you.
Next would be the dumpster that contains all the extra skin left over from the tanning plant that processes deer hides. When it`s hot and humid and the garbage man “missed” this one on his route.
The worst thing I have smelled was buring R-22 (Air Conditioning Refrigerant). I had a headache for 2 days following that little experience.
Well, it used to be the inside of my own chest cavity, but then my cat came down with something that made him produce copious pools of strawberry-jam diarrhea. That was foul.
My brother drew a line across our shared bedroom and told me if I crossed it he would kill me. Of course the door was on his side. One night he got drunk and ate a whole pound of potato chips. In the middle of the night he vomited all over the floor. I preteded to be asleep while I gagged on the stench. I would have left the room but I feared he would kill me if I crossed the line. Stale beer, digested chips and stomach juices… ahhhh! Oh, one other smell: Failed septic systems.
an old cup with a little dried up milk (god knows how old) left in my sister’s car.
My neighbor’s cooking. No, this isn’t normal gross cooking, the smell makes me choke. And I open all my windows and light all my cnadles and a stick of incense. And then I can resume breathing. He’s either sauteeing dirty vaginas or old, crunchy socks, I am convinced. Ew.
um, let me ammend my last post with a TMI warning for the squeemish. . .
I believe you are speaking of the Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which Big Daddy says to his son Brick, “There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity.”
rob, you were probably exposed to a form of fluorine gas. This frequently evolves during thermal decomposition of R22 and similar freon based refrigerants. Here is an excerpt:
“Refrigerants are decomposed under influence of high temperatures caused by flame or electric heaters. During decomposition, there can emit toxic and irritating contextures, in particular, hydrogen and fluorine chlorides. Strong smell emitted by the decomposed refrigerant causes irritation of nose and throat mucous tunic of the personnel. Emitted acid vapor are dangerous, and in order to avoid their effect on the personnel production areas should be immediately emptied of people and ventilated. A person, having been exposed to the effect of refrigerant decomposition products, should be immediately taken outside for fresh air and should be immediately given medical care. Work should not be continued at presence of these vapors because it can influence harmfully the health of the personnel.”
You are fortunate to have suffered only a headache. A friend of mine narrowly averted the deepfry of a Cray II supercomputer. The CPU was immersion cooled in Freon refrigerant. One minute longer and the catastrophic PCB short-out and meltdown would have started to generate large quantities of fluorine gas.
I agree with her on this point. Burned rotting human flesh smell never leaves you. I worked at one of the sites after Sept. 11 and the smell permeated everything. I had to throw my clothes away after the ordeal. In some the offices near the area you can still smell it today. It just seemed to go beyond stomach churning and the whole time they were telling you not to throw up.
A little over a month ago I suffered a minor stroke. One of the outcomes has been that my sense of smell (which was already very strong for some reason) has been amplified even more. Even the most pleasant smells have become overpowering. Luckily, I haven’t been exposed to anything particularly foul yet.
When it happened and I got my first whiff of that smell my boss said it was Mustard Gas. Everytime I smell R-22 now I get
a headache, even if its not burning. Thanks for the info, and I will be a lot safer around it now.
Rob
My tale is very tame, but if you mix Emaraude perfume, human flesh that hasn’t been washed for a few days, and sour milk on a hot, humid summer day; you’ll understand why I stay away from outdoor concerts on the lawn at large venues.
Earlier today someone found a paper bag with his lunch in it… from last September.
There was a plastic bag in it with something brown and black, absolutely unidentifiable.
Smelled REALLY bad.