actually, I was reading it that he did not like the decayed institution smell–but that in general he was used to the usual. Anyone who has never found their own objectionable, just doesn’t get out much. Let me rephrase that… as soon as I can figure out how.
Now that you guys, say it, I realize I have smelled some sort of… olfactory bonding. Today, even, by coincidence, I noticed on my way into work that I kept smelling the gentleman I spent last night with, even though I’ve taken a shower and changed clothes (and trust me, he’s never set foot in the art museum.) It happens more with some people than others, though, and more with people who have a particularly distinctive scent. I only smell men this way, also (of course, I’m a hetero female, so maybe I’m just not “smelling for girl”.) Is there any sort of scientific work done of this? Now that I think of it, it happens fairly often.
Tons of research. Look up pheromones.
I’m going to “rip” this thread open again.
I’m looking into this myself, as I sometimes spend a little time in a industrial water treatment plant. Some times I take a sample of sludge (the bacteria and all their products) and dry it. This generates an unpleasant smell that my colleagues complain about, although I get used to it within a few minutes myself. Inside the treatment plant, it’s old, it’s leaky, and some biogas leaks into the rooms. The biogas has a characteristic smell, of course a measureable amount of H2S, but I suspect a few other thiol (sulfur) components in trace amounts. It’s incredibly hard to describe the smell and it’s very likely a product of many components, but either way it’s characteristic and I can recognize it.
My case is that I only go to the treatment plant occasionally, spend 1-2 hours there, then leave. I am exposed to low levels of H2S, SO2 and methane (we carry sensors). Legally, it’s within safety regulations. But when I came home last Friday, I had some dinner and about 5 hours after leaving the treatment plant, I produced some flatulence. Maybe it was a bit unusual food, I can’t be sure, but unmistakably the first 3-4 farts had the same characteristic smell as the treatment plant biogas. The remarkable thing was that the latter farts smelled more “normal”. I also smelled my faeces and it smelled disgusting, but not industrial biogas.
Of course this leads to the great conclusion that, yes, the odorous components of your workplace readily goes into your bloodstream, but the body transports those components quite fast into the exhaust system. In the biogas case, many of these components are “known” to the body as they are produced and used by my own cells or symbiotic bacteria and archaea. Likely the body knows well how to do deal with these molecules.
Problems would occur when the body is not able to transport it fast enough. Like many things, there is a proportionality with concentration and time with the likelihood of interaction with the body, and consequently the chances of negatvely interfering with bodily processes. So I’m glad if the body gets rid of these things so efficiently.
My girlfriend also noted that she experienced the same effect on the small farm she grew up in. Whenever she spent a long time in the stinky barn, her farts would smell identical. Since the odours in the barn and in the water treatment plant are related to decay processes, I guess the body diverts this to our own decay system efficiently 
I certainly hope that this concept, discovered 8 yrs ago has been researched. Smellcoustics is the last frontier of scientific research.
I worked in an office environment with large numbers of people from India and around lunchtime people would start cooking stuff and there was often a hideous aroma that was reminiscent of some things that come out the anus. I thought it might be a sulfur-compound thing since I understand that many of those anal odors come from sulfuric compounds like hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan.
I believe that it gets into you system through Breathing your environment, I have in all my years working agriculture such as live stock and chemicals used in farming breathing this environment works though your respiratory system and eventually in your blood and through your digestive system and you end up having flatulence with that Oder. Have experienced it for over 50 years so I’m convinced that’s the process.
I think many people know what “that smell” smells like in a nursing home if you’ve frequented them often.
The better question is, what causes THAT smell?
It could offer clues.
moved from “personal” to “core”:
I sometimes wish the internet was more like a book…
I have been searching online everywhere! My mom has been sick and diagnosed with cancer. I shower and change my clothes when I get home. But, when I have gas, it smells like her environment. Ex: the vomit she has spit up all day, or her bowel movements. Whatever scent is around, I can smell much later in my flatulence. It is not pscychosematic. It’s real. The smell changes. I’ve been in her home, hospital room etc. So, I agree with you! And don’t think you are crazy. Our skin is an organ, it must be absorbing our surroundings. Also, I hate subscribing to anything etc. I sunscribed and logged in just to share with you!!!
What a thread to bring back from the dead!
according to this Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, of the University of Newcastle, holding in farts can lead to the gas being reabsorbed into your bloodstream and later being exhaled as gas via the lungs. any reason this process wouldn’t work in reverse, like the OP and others that have shared? sounds reasonable that as we breathe, non-zero amounts of ALL the compounds in the air are absorbed into the bloodstream and excreted as waste gas.
To the extent it works in reverse it would be minuscule. The gas absorbed from the intestines is produced there (or is indistinguishable from the gas absorbed through the lungs). Small amounts may be dissolved into the blood stream and be measurable in the air expelled from your lungs, but since there is no thread here at SDMB titled “Why does my breath smell like farts” it’s safe to say it’s not much.
Likewise gas in your blood, absorbed through the lungs, might join the gas in the intestine, but unlike the lungs which have an enormous surface area designed for gas exchange, flatus sits in bubbles in the colon, with a comparably huge volume bounded by a lot less surface, and a surface not designed for gas exchange at all.
IANAD, but I’d guess that smelly substances in your environment are more likely to influence your farts by air that you swallow, than by going through your bloodstream.