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DNA
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Lately I smelled benzylmercaptan or better known as the above mentioned phenylethylmercaptan...
It made me throw up and dizzy and the stench is still around my backpack for a couple of days.
If you open the bottle everything starts to smell like it, even if it is just lying around in the fumehood.
I had to throw away some pencils since they also smelled after I opened the bottle in the fumehood.
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Nicodem
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| Quote: | Originally posted by DNA
Lately I smelled benzylmercaptan or better known as the above mentioned phenylethylmercaptan...
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Benzyl mercaptan (benzyl thiol) is not the same as phenylethyl mercaptan (phenylethyl thiol).
The first is PhCH<sub>2</sub>SH and the second either PhCH(SH)CH<sub>3</sub> or
PhCH<sub>2</sub>CH<sub>2</sub>SH (depending on which of the two possible isomers you mean).
In my experience, benzyl thiol is quite bearable in small enough concentrations. Its stench reminded me of how elephants and their shit smell.
However, I never had to deal with it in more than trace amounts that escaped from the fume hood. Yet I find it less terrible than PhSH, for example.
…there is a human touch of the cultist “believer” in every theorist that he must struggle against as being
unworthy of the scientist. Some of the greatest men of science have publicly repudiated a theory which earlier they hotly defended. In this lies their
scientific temper, not in the scientific defense of the theory. - Weston La Barre (Ghost Dance, 1972)
Read the The ScienceMadness Guidelines!
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Sandmeyer
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Glassware can be cleaned up with bleach, it effectively oxidise the thio compounds and thus removes stench. P4S10 used to make Lawesson's reagent also
stinks like hell.
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Armistice19
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Mood: Brain sponge activated!
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The most absolutely horrifying, traumatic, dehumanizing, and unbearably excruciating smell that has ever wafted over the winds of this earth and into
the noses of the inhabitants of this planet is beyond any shadow of a doubt a chemical called... Putrescine NH2(CH2)4NH2... the cousin of, and direct
product of such a terrifying biological process that even the most honorable men and women of our country’s medical society would tremble at the
thought of... BACTERIAL VAGINOSIS.
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Pulverulescent
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Mood: Torn between two monikers ─ "hissingnoise" and the present incarnation!
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Hyperventilating, hysterical hyperbole aside, it aint called putrescine for nothing.
But the experience of smell can be modified by context or setting.
Obviously if you're planning a night of passion with your lady you don't want to walk into a room where the plug (urea/formaldehyde resin) of an
appliance is overheating with decomposition.
And the Regal Roquefort has a butyric acid smell but the fact that it's a cheese mediates its strong odour.
Some months ago I had a situation where I needed to siphon, by mouth, a saturated NH4N03 solution containing various dead insects; millipedes, mostly.
I figured that, since I wouldn't actually ingest the stuff, I could rinse my mouth out later without worrying.
Anyway, it tasted terrible, with a very strong saltiness and something really nasty in the background.
Several mouth washes got rid of the saltiness but accomplished nothing else; along with an all pervasive bad taste in my mouth I had a similar stink
in my nostrils.
That taste and smell stayed with me for an entire week!
It was so strong I couldn't smell or taste anything else.
It was one helluva long week!
P
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chemoleo
Biochemicus Energeticus
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Ethanedithiol.
No doubt about it.
The smell is so strong that just the container formerly containing a container of ethanedithiol reaked out the lab such that within 20 sec the room
was vacated, after which the staircase and adjacent labs were also vacated.... (the empty container happened to be placed outside as an emergency
measure, about 5 m away (with a wall inbetween) from the air con inlet, and it sucked in all the lovely smell, distributing it across the labs and 4
floors)... not a pleasant episode! Kept my head low for a while...
Never Stop to Begin, and Never Begin to Stop...
Tolerance is good. But not with the intolerant! (Wilhelm Busch)
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JohnWW
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| Quote: | Originally posted by chemoleo
Ethanedithiol.No doubt about it.
The smell is so strong that just the container formerly containing a container of ethanedithiol reaked out the lab such that within 20 sec the room
was vacated, after which the staircase and adjacent labs were also vacated.... (the empty container happened to be placed outside as an emergency
measure, about 5 m away (with a wall inbetween) from the air con inlet, and it sucked in all the lovely smell, distributing it across the labs and 4
floors)... not a pleasant episode! Kept my head low for a while... |
That is very much the same what happened in my Chemistry Department at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, back in 1969! The wax seal on
the screw-top of a bottle of HS-CH2-CH2-SH in a chemicals storage room in the basement somehow became broken or cracked, and the garlicky odor of its
vapor permeated the whole basement, until its source was discovered..
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JeanGeilland
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The most embarrassing aspect of my experimenting with thiols was the fact that they diffused through and round everything except solid glass or metal.
No stopper was too tight and no organic material too insoluble to prevent its passage. And the merest trace was enough to tell everyone in the
neighbourhood that something was horribly wrong.
Oh well, it's all experience, as long as you can store the information for unpredictable benefits later in life. What, after all, is science for
otherwise?
JG
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kilowatt
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I have a friend that works at the local apiary, and would often come home smelling like butyric acid. They use butyric anhydride as a bee repellent.
I find that smell utterly nauseating. I work across the street from the place during the summer too and you can often smell it.
The mind cannot decide the truth; it can only find the truth.
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Fyndium
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I have had my fair share of smell issues, and I have found out that anything other than glass or metal is usually just easier to dispose than salvage.
Especially plastics seem to take up some smells so badly that no amount of percarbonate or bleach washing gets rid of it. And yes, smells readily
permeate through plastic, so even multiple ziplocs do little to stop the bigger odor demons.
The workspace is a bigger issue. A fume hood should be made 100% of stainless steel and glass to allow for efficient cleaning after odors. Possibly
ozonizing the whole compartment after rinsing with percarb and bleach would get rid of the most. Apart from that, any porous materials and fabrics
should be removed before working, and an apparel that can be effectively washed or at worst case disposed should be worn.
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DraconicAcid
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Butyric acid is mild compared to isovaleric.
Please remember: "Filtrate" is not a verb.
Write up your lab reports the way your instructor wants them, not the way your ex-instructor wants them.
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Texium
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Someone at work has been running a lot of Swern oxidations lately. Normally everything stays in the hood, so you’ll only catch the occasional whiff
of sulfur/rotten-broccoli-like odor, but recently he opened one of his waste containers, which contained a lot of dimethyl sulfide, outside of the
hood. It was open for no more than 30 seconds, but the odor in that region of the lab was nostril-burningly bad for the rest of the day.
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BromicAcid
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Ethyl isonitrile all day and then some.
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Bedlasky
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From what I read, thioacetone and carbon diselenide are quite nasty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thioacetone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_diselenide
Worst things I've ever smelled are probably tert-butylamine and N,N-dimethylisopropylamine. They smell like ammonia, but much more distinctively.
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Fyndium
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What is actually the mechanism of extremely smelly chemicals? For example, acetone and sulfur alone are not that smelly or unpleasant at all, at least
in moderate concentrations. Sulfur, of course, is not volatile in elemental form, but when burnt, does not smell that bad still. What do they react
with in our olfactory receptors, and what makes us consider them so stinky?
Does thioacetone have any commercial uses at all?
[Edited on 29-5-2021 by Fyndium]
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Fery
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Recently I received a parcel by PPL courier and they behaved very rude to the parcel because 500 ml bottle with 33% diethylamine was broken. The
bottle itself was protected with a lot of layers of filter paper and bubble foil so only little of chemical escaped, but the leakage was visible on
the bottom of the cardboard box. Also the cardboard box was protected by few layers of transparent adhesive tape (and big sign that it contains glass,
should be handled with big care, should be transported always in upright position, never turned bottom up etc). Strange that there were more chemicals
but they broke only the most nasty compound which was best protected. The courier unloaded the parcel in a big hurry :-D and disappeared as quickly as
possible with widely opened all car windows although it was quite cold and rainy outside. Luckily it was rainy day so I put the broken bottle into a
bucket of water and diluted that scent quickly. I had to order another bottle and the second time they delivered it unbroken (2 days ago). It was not
expensive, it was an old sample and its cost was only 100 CZK = 4 EUR.
Also dissolving NH3 gas in ethanol was quite brutal after the alcohol got saturated (during dissolution which is exothermic process it became slightly
warmer which decreased the solubility of ammonia gas in the alcohol), I did it outside during winter night when I expected all my neighbors be inside
their houses.
I have valeric, butyric, isobutyric, isovaleric, caproic acids. Sniffing them from opened bottle was not pleasant but such high concentration very
likely atenuated my smell receptors. Sniffing them in very low concentration (empty plastic bottles after I transferred the content into glass
bottles) was much more unpleasant.
2 preparations of allyl alcohol (glycerin + formic acid) were not nice and they both had always almost 1 day consequences (tears in eyes, irritated
nose and throat). Maybe it was caused not only by the allyl alcohol itself but also acrolein?
I had not yet experience with thiols (with exception of mercaptans used in natural gas and propane-butane), I need to improve my skills before I try
them.
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karlos³
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Quote: Originally posted by Texium  | | Someone at work has been running a lot of Swern oxidations lately. Normally everything stays in the hood, so you’ll only catch the occasional whiff
of sulfur/rotten-broccoli-like odor, but recently he opened one of his waste containers, which contained a lot of dimethyl sulfide, outside of the
hood. It was open for no more than 30 seconds, but the odor in that region of the lab was nostril-burningly bad for the rest of the day.
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I made savoy cabbage like two weeks ago and I couldn't eat much of it and had to throw it all away the next day, when the dimethylsulfide stench
somehow became more noticeable.
I think I can't eat that anymore, because I dislike dimethyl sulfides smell so much, just like with brussels sprouts.
I still remember that one time I ran an albright-goldmann oxidation, luckily at very small scale, and was a bit surprised by the overwhelmingly strong
stench when opening the flask, horrible stuff.
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Dr.Bob
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I have not made that one, but several others, and the smell is unfamiliar, but so horrible as to be hard to imagine. It just makes you want to
vomit. The funny thing is that most are not toxic, as they hydrolyze in vivo quickly. They just smell like death itself.
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DraconicAcid
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I remember having to scream at a grad student to get the bottle of phenyl isothiocyanate in the fume hood when it's open, and he just kind of blankly
stared at me, asking, "Then how am I supposed to weigh it out?"
Please remember: "Filtrate" is not a verb.
Write up your lab reports the way your instructor wants them, not the way your ex-instructor wants them.
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Fyndium
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Isopropylamine is much less stinky what I thought.
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Raid
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One of the worst things i have smelled is concentrated hydrazine.
It smells like highly concentrated ammonia, you can smell it from 5 feet away.
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MadHatter
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Sulfur Based
Just about anything combined with sulfur tops the category for me and especially
hydrogen sulfide. All mercaptans fill the bill as well.
[Edited on 2023/1/30 by MadHatter]
From opening of NCIS New Orleans - It goes a BOOM ! BOOM ! BOOM ! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !
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chloric1
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Worst stench is when I consume dairy milk. Ugh! My stomach!
Fellow molecular manipulator
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SnailsAttack
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Last summer I was doing a lot of experiments involving chemical extraction from plants. Had zero success, and the smell was ungodly, even using bleach
to negate most of the sulphides.
Pro-tip for plant extractions: do NOT cook the plant material. It frees up all sorts of nasty-smelling organics, not to mention nutrients that feed
molds.
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BromicAcid
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I had the (dis)pleasure of being involved in the manufacture of a whole series of isonitriles, ethyl, propyl, butyl. They are truly noxious.
However, there is only one time I vomited from a smell - though it was not a specific chemical.
When I used to work at a trailer park we were responsible for the water supply to each trailer until it connected to the trailer. The water line
would come out of the ground about 8 ft below ground level and rise up through the center of a 2 ft diameter pipe in the ground till it connected to
the trailer. We got a call that someone had a leak on the water supply.
Sure enough we arrived at the trailer and there was a leak somewhere in the crock in the ground. It was filled with some (a foot or two) of water.
We tossed a submersible pump down the hole and let it go to work. Unknown to us, a skunk had fallen into that crock and died. In the ensuing
weeks/months it had rotted to the point that the flesh and muscles were easily masticated by the pumping action. Within short order this skunk stew
started to be discharged by the pump into the area where we were standing. It was... too much. Dry heaves and vomiting all around and from the smell
alone.
I also had to optimize a synthesis for HMDS (Bis(trimethylsilyl)sulfide) once upon a time. The compound while not the worst smelling in the world is
still pretty horrible but the claim to fame is the odor threshold. A single drop in a well ventilated chemical production bay was able to be smelled
outside the building.
[Edited on 2/4/2023 by BromicAcid]
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