South St. Chuck McGinley, a chemical engineer, stepped out of his car and looked at the smokestack of an animal processing plant. The smell of the nearby trees was the first thing he smelled.
The wind picked up suddenly. We have a smell! Mr. McGinley exclaimed.
One of his colleagues pressed a Nasal Ranger to his nose. One of Mr. McGinley's most significant inventions is the 14-inch long smell-measuring device.
The team described the stink using terms from one of Mr. McGinley's standard tools, an odor wheel, a chart akin to an artist's color wheel that he has been fine-tuning for decades. One person said that they were sorry. One person said, "Decay, with possibly some petroleum."
The smell disappeared as soon as it arrived. Mr. McGinley said that the wind decided it was going to give them only a sniff. To tease us.
Humans know to avoid bad smells. Mr. McGinley has returned to this site many times in order to measure, describe and demystify smell.
Mr. McGinley and his son Mike have established an influence over the measurement and understanding of odor. The elder Mr. McGinley invented tools that have been used by scientists around the world.
The growing demand for Mr. McGinley's services and instruments shows society's heightened awareness of the power of odor and its potential to make people physically ill or diminish their quality of life. The movement to recognize odor as a pollutant has taken off thanks to his inventions.
Where should I go if I have an odor problem? Jacek Koziel, an agricultural engineer who studies odor at Iowa State University, said that it would be Chuck and Mike McGinley. He said that their methods give policymakers and researchers hard evidence to show that odor is real.
The image is.
The New York Times has a story about an odor wheel that helps people find the right terms.
Mr. McGinley's son demonstrated a mask.
smell is the most powerful of the human senses. It can be a time capsule in any given moment. It can linger, triggering feelings that can't be described.
It gives valuable warnings. A whiff of milk can tell you if it is safe to drink. A sniff can tell you if your socks are clean. Losing one's sense of smell is a possible sign of Covid-19 infections. Mr. McGinley said that the nose is the early warning that something isn't good.
We are often tripped up by smells because people don't have confidence in describing what they see and hear. We speak in metaphors. A smell is often similar to something else: a rose, a wet dog, a grandmother's house.
Mr. McGinley said that most people say that the smell of a factory makes them sick. They don't know why.
Spending a short time with him, one can pick up bits of odor related information. Who knew that most of the air we breathe is only passed through one nostril? His wife loves the smell of Oriental lilies, but he finds it ugly.
He often addresses debates that go beyond his day-to-day work, such as the question of whether the human is averse to putrid smells or nurture. How can I measure a perception? How do you give people confidence in their noses?
The human nose is better at detecting chemicals in the air than it is at smelling them. One part per billion is the concentration that hydrogen sulfide can be detected at.
The distance from New York to Los Angeles is only 1 part per billion.
The difficulty of regulating odors is captured by that fact. hydrogen sulfide is unlikely to pose a health risk. Susan Schiffman, a clinical psychologist who has studied odor and taste for half a century, said that it is very disruptive to people.
There are no laws in the United States to regulate odor. A quarter of the complaints to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry are about it. There is debate over whether a smell is dangerous.
It is one thing to measure emissions, but it is another thing to smell it. It puts us in a bind about how we regulate because it can be experienced differently by many people. She said that any industry has the potential for off-site emissions.
There is a hog farm. The system is patchy and only a dozen or so states regulate odor.
Mr. McGinley and one of his employees are in the field.
There is a growing body of medical literature that supports the idea that odor can cause physical health problems. People living near malodorous sites can suffer from headaches, burning eyes and nausea as well as mental health challenges.
The decision not to regulate odor at the federal level was made in the 1970s. Half of the people who responded to a series of surveys thought odor was a serious problem. The EPA decided that it would leave it to local governments to create nuisance odor laws.
Several states regulate odor and local governments have set up their own. The system leaves disputes to be dealt with in the courts.
In 1996, Mr. McGinley was called to testify about the repeal of odor regulations in Minnesota. He said the lawyers would love it. Not having rules would mean a lot of lawsuits.
He was correct. A jury in North Carolina awarded $475 million to neighbors of a company that makes industrial hog farms. In a statement, the company said it had settled similar cases for an undisclosed amount.
Not everyone has the time or money to file a lawsuit. Mr. McGinley said that smelly industries can disproportionately affect minorities or poorer communities.
The smell had a reputation akin to alchemy. Alexander Graham Bell spoke in 1914 about the importance of measurement to the advancement of science. He said that sound and light could be measured. Not a smell.
Card 1 of 3.
If you want to find a new science, measure the smell.
Olfactometers were invented more than a century ago and work on the principle that you draw in air through a small hole and then evaporate it until a person can no longer smell it. The strength of the odor was represented by the amount of dilution. The US government developed portable olfactometers, or Scentometers, which were little more than an acrylic box with holes of differing sizes at one end, and you could cover them with your fingers. They were awkward to use.
During his vacation in Hawaii, Mr. McGinley came up with the idea for his own devices. The conical shape might work well for a smell-measuring tool after he saw the Haleakala volcano. The Nasal Ranger requires little more than a big sniff and adjusting the dial until you no longer smell it.
The original scentometer was better than the Nasal Ranger, said Dr. Dalton of the Monell Center. Scientists and start-ups are working to develop electronic noses that can measure and identify odors. The technology is not there yet.
Naomi Liester works for St. Croix Sensory and she uses one of the lab's olfactometers.
Mr. McGinley said that his nose was his early warning.
Mr. McGinley came to smell bad. He got an entry level job at the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, where he had a small role in the department that invented scratch-and-sniff technology. Mr. McGinley said it was a very small part.
He was interviewing for a job at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency after the experience. The interviewer said the odor position pays more when he mentioned the scratch-and-sniff.
The bigger paycheck seemed appealing to young children. He was hired to be part of the agency's new odor inspection team. He said that he accidentally fell into the business of knowing more about smell than the average person.
On a Sunday morning in June 1975, another turning point came.
Two farmers were at Mr. McGinley's door that morning. The couple had traveled a long way to beg for his help. The couple told him that the smells from the animal processing plant were making them sleepy. They had headaches and nausea. Their throats were burning. Doctors did not believe them. Nobody believed that a smell could be bad.
Mr. McGinley realized that odors were more than just a smell.
Almost all of the clients that he and his wife started their air-quality business with were sewage treatment plants. He expanded his facility after word spread.
The lobby of his laboratory has wooden rafters and a stone fireplace. The board game What's That Smell is on one of the side tables, as are copies of books like "Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind."
The New York Times has a story on Jan Thron sniffing cat litter.
Mike, who is also a chemical engineer, has taken over the lab in recent years, expanding into more testing work for food and consumer-goods companies, as well as crafting recipes for theater troupes and museums.
He created 22 smells for a local theater production, including one to mimic an old woman's apartment. When a detergent company wanted to test the smell of freshly laundered towels that had previously been damaged, it couldn't wait for towels to mold. Mike developed his own mold smell.
The McGinleys hired a group of mostly women who were trained to categorize and describe smells to conduct a test for a cat litter brand. They worked in a room lined with boxes, each with a small hole for a mask. The boxes were filled with different litter formulas and a control that was freshly deposited with urine and poop.
The assessors were inhaling and noting the characteristics of the boxes. After several hours, they broke for lunch.
One of the assessors said that she now has a different awareness of the smell that surrounds all of us. She said that sometimes she will notice the smell when opening a package or walking down the aisle of a grocery store.
This kind of awareness has been tried to instill by Mr. McGinley. He said that they go through their life with a button on their nose. Turn off that button. Listen with your nose.
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