Kate Murphy reports at the NYT that although one person’s putrid is another person’s pleasant, local governments are beginning to regulate intrusive and unpleasant smells using high tech devices. If you time-travelled back 200 years or so, you’d likely scrunch up your nose. Our forebears threw sewage out their windows, and the primary mode of transport — horses — relieved themselves all over the street. These days 'we have so reduced the level of background odor pollution, we are becoming more sensitive to anything we smell,” says Pamela Dalton, an olfactory researcher at Monell Chemical Senses Center, a nonprofit group in Philadelphia that studies smell and taste. In the past offenders were typically livestock operations and wastewater treatment plants, but more recently odor inspectors are getting calls about smells emanating from ethnic restaurants, coffee roasters and candle and bath shops. In an effort to be objective, a growing number of locales have begun using a device called a Nasal Ranger, which looks like a megaphone for the nose and measures the intensity of smells according to a so-called dilution ratio (PDF). An odor is considered intrusive if the average person can smell it when it is diluted with seven parts clean air — a decades-old threshold of stinky.
New York City received more than 10,000 odor complaints last year, many from residents upset about cooking smells wafting into their apartments from restaurants and coffee houses — smells that might be pleasing when patronizing those same establishments. “A lot of it has to do with tolerance level in neighborhoods that are getting gentrified,” says Ben Siller. “People at lower socio-economic levels may tolerate something much better than someone who moves into the same area and buys a house, sinks a fortune into remodeling and then goes out in the backyard and smells a pot grower, charbroiler, pet food manufacturer or something stinky like that.”
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Tuesday April 21 2015, @11:33AM
Last year I posted a story about the Nasal Ranger [soylentnews.org], which is used in Denver to detect consumers of cannabis.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Tuesday April 21 2015, @01:04PM
I didn't catch the Nasal Ranger from your story link last year, but the picture in the telegraphs article of the guy with it to his nose sure made me chuckle... I can't imagine going around with that thing in public... (although I'm sure it would be useful for its intended purpose)
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(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Tuesday April 21 2015, @02:57PM
It was the chuckles that made me submit the story in the first place :)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:22PM
Living in most recently developed suburbs you smell nothing but flowers or perhaps the occasional barbecue. True, there is something about a dogs that causes both deafness and olfactory failure among their owners.
Living in smell-free zones makes people (nonsmokers at least) very conscious of the smells encountered when traveling to the heart of downtown big-city. Especially if there is no wind. The sewer gas venting to street level can be eye watering. The smell of stale beer near bar can carry half a block.
Downwind of a feed lot (cattle) can be over powering for several miles. (I'm looking at you Omaha). Still, down wind of a pea packing (cannery) plant is far worse.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by aclarke on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:51PM
This problem seems to be intensified when people move into a new area with existing industries and businesses, and then are unhappy with what they find when they get here. Around here, this leads to frustrated commuters annoyed that "their" road is being blocked by a tractor after moving into their dream country property, or being annoyed by the odour caused by farmers spreading manure. If you don't want to deal with pre-existing conditions, don't move into the area.
It's the opposite issue that could cause one to become reasonably annoyed by odour. I'd potentially be annoyed if a business with a smell I found objectionable moved in next door to my house. However, even that often seems like a proxy for "there are people with different customs and cultures living near me and I find that uncomfortable."
My olfactory issue is the beef farmer across the road who feeds his cattle watermelons. By the dump truck load. He gets paid to take them after they're too rotten to sell. But even that isn't a big deal as it's a good 500m away so I hardly ever smell it. Plus, he was here first. In other words, it's not a very big problem at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @04:52AM
So if I fart and my neighbor can smell it can I be fined?
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Wednesday April 22 2015, @06:31AM
Yes. Hanging over the fence like that with your pants down...really, you need to work on a longer term plan like, say, how you should spend the next hour...