Odour is big business.聽Both producing it and eliminating it.聽While perfume and toiletry companies battle to churn out novel fragrances to entertain our olfactory receptors, the huge odour control industry strives to protect us from the assault of nasty scents.聽 This is actually a greater challenge.聽 In the perfume trade you can get away with some inventive advertising and fanciful claims, but when it comes to eliminating odours, well, it isn鈥檛 hard to tell if a product works or not.
Bad smells are not rare.聽Pet urine, garbage, manure, sewage, mildew, sweat and the toilet bowl all waft undesirable fragrances into the air.聽How do you get rid of them?聽There are several options.聽The odour can be masked by a more powerful one, which is essentially what floral scented air fresheners do.聽 Or the smelly molecules can be removed from the air.聽Air purifiers pass the air through activated carbon filters which can bind smelly compounds.聽Zeolites (aluminosilicate minerals) have an amazing ability of adsorbing molecules to their surface and are available in various formats.
Chemical reactions can also be used.聽Fish odour on the hands is due to chemicals called amines.聽But if reacted with citric acid in lemon juice, they form salts that do not become airborne.聽Washing hands with lemon juice therefore eliminates fishy aromas.聽Many undesirable smells, such as that of spoiled food, are due to organic acids, and can be neutralized by baking soda.聽Fragrant molecules in the air can also be destroyed by means of a chemical reaction.聽Ozone generators produce ozone gas which can destroy smelly compounds in the air.聽The smell of smoke after a fire yields to ozone.聽Certain enzymes produced by bacteria can also chew up foul compounds.聽Most pet odour eliminators are bacterial concoctions.
Molecules can also be removed from the air by interacting with other volatile substances in such a way that the resulting complex is no longer volatile.聽Cyclodextrin, the active ingredient in products like Febreze, is a large molecule made of glucose units joined in a ring.聽Malodorous compounds are entrapped in the ring, and the cyclodextrin-smelly molecule complex, because of the extra mass, now settles out of the air.聽Some essential oils from plants can also interact with volatile compounds in this fashion and many smell 鈥渘eutralizers鈥� are based on this principle.
But there is more to essential oils.聽Some can bind to receptors in our nose without triggering any action, and in the process block other molecules from interacting with the receptor.聽Sort of like the wrong key fitting a lock without being able to unlock it, but preventing the right key from being inserted.聽There has been a great deal of research trying to find specific essential oils to block specific smells, with some success.聽Unfortunately the information is proprietary and companies will not reveal exactly what oils they use, but the results can be effective in controlling bad smells emanating from pig manure, landfills and sewage treatment plants.
Sometimes odour control products and perfumes can work hand in hand.聽The Harvey Prince Company, a New York based perfume manufacturer, claims to have come up with just such a happy union in 鈥淎geless Fantasy,鈥� a perfume having the 鈥渟mell of youth.鈥澛營 bet you sniff a scam coming up.聽But maybe not.聽At least, not a total scam.聽The whole idea is based on the notion that as we age our body chemistry changes, and we produce novel compounds.
Japanese researcher, Shinichiro Haze analyzed the scents emanating from shirts worn for three days by subjects ranging in age from 26 to 75.聽One particular compound stood out.聽 2-Nonenal, with an odour described as greasy, grassy, 鈥渙ld book,鈥� or 鈥渙ld person鈥� was more prominent in the elderly.聽Subsequent research revealed that it was the product of bacterial action on vaccenic and palmitoleic acids, both of which are found in sweat and increase with age.
Armed with this knowledge, Harvey Prince developed 鈥淎geless Fantasy鈥� with hopes of neutralizing the scent of 2-nonenal.聽Chemically destroying a scent is not in the realm of a perfume, however, masking one is.聽But the company wanted something more than just a masking smell.聽It wanted a youthful fragrance.聽Previous research had indicated that the scent of grapefruit was associated with youth.聽 Could there be some mix of plant fragrances that both blocked 2-nonenal and optimized the youth effect?聽In an intriguing experiment women were anointed with different scents while a panel of men judged their age.聽The scents of apple, pink grapefruit, pomegranate, mango and pineapple consistently made the men underestimate the age of the wearer.聽Floral fragrances like jasmine and cherry blossom triggered happy emotions.聽Feelings of youth and excitement were attributed to musk and vanilla.
So Harvey Prince blended all these, plus more, in Ageless Fantasy and sprinkled it on women.聽Men were then invited for a sniff test.聽And the results, we鈥檙e told, were quite exciting.聽The testers judged the women wearing Ageless Fantasy to be eight years younger than their chronological age.
I鈥檓 not sure what we can make of all this, because the research hasn鈥檛 been published.聽Did they test to see if the scent of pure 2-nonenal was masked?聽Did they use controls?聽Did they determine how the men guessed ages in the absence of a perfume?聽 Maybe men are polite when asked to judge a lady鈥檚 age.聽Or maybe any perfume would provoke similar results.聽Who knows?聽 But for $120, you can try your own experiment.聽Let鈥檚 face it, getting older stinks.聽While a perfume can鈥檛 turn back the clock, it may trick others into believing that you had a dip in the fountain of youth.
