Stinky memories

The picture of Jacek Koziel's undergraduate student analyzing the gas chromatograph's sniff port to determine the stinky components of livestock yard air brought back memories of similar work discussed at a group meeting back in graduate school (C&EN, Sept. 25, page 104). My Columbia University colleague, Bill Hersh, now at Queens College, presented an interesting paper from the scientific literature involving aged liquid swine manure (Bull. Chem. Soc. Japan 1979, 52, 114). Their experiment displayed interesting parallels to the current work, such as sniffing the exit of their thermal conductivity GC as the volatile compounds from the distillate of swine manure eluted, something they termed "organoleptic analysis."

You can imagine if the diluted stuff smelled bad, what the experience of sniffing pure stench must have been like. I think we owe Koziel's group and others similarly involved in improving our olfactory environment a vote of thanks, rather than the guffaws that such self-sacrificing research typically receives.

Still, you have to appreciate the humor that must underlie such work. For instance, the 1979 paper ends with the acknowledgment: "The authors wish to thank Mr. Minoru Kuriyama, a hog raiser near Tsukuba, New Town, Ibaraki Prefecture, for his offer of liquid swine manure." Now, there's a conscientious author!

Jaan Pesti
Yardley Pa.