Alie Ward (host)

Yeah, that kind of gas.

Gotcha.

Okay, so this is called, very simply, gas odorization, and it's added to natural gas and propane so we know when something might blow up and kill us.

Now, why do we do this?

Because when pipelines were filled with these naturally colorless, odorless gases, things blew up and killed us.

And in one 1937 explosion in Texas, nearly 300 kids and their teachers died.

After that, someone said, let's make this stinky so people notice.

So what notes you might notice when you leave Bunsen burner unlit and you start to panic are tetrahydrotheophene, which lends a garlic-like stench.

Well, mercaptans, which are delightful little sulfhydryl groups bonded to a carbon atom, they lend it the classic timeless rotten egg smell.

And then rounding out the fragrance profile are additional sulfides that just keep the stench lingering.

Now, why the sulfides?

Why do those get our attention?

Okay, hydrogen sulfide, it's already present in nature in both rotting eggs and the guy next to you on the plane who just cannot hold it in.

You know he's trying.

I, too, think it's cool as hell and it's worth the hyper focus.

I took Latin in high school and the word perfume always delighted me just that it's through smoke.

You know, it's meaning being through smoke.

Do you find a lot of historical texts that talk about things like, you know, incense and the smells of churches and smoke?

Do you find that as time goes on, those references change a little bit?

And in our mommiology episode about mummies, we cover how the wealthiest ancient Egyptians just spent a grip of cash to preserve their corpses with this sticky goo of herbs and aromatics.