Some time ago, Cassie Werber, wrote about the control of malodours being a really difficult task.
Most companies just use masking agents that cover up the malodour, but when the wind changes the malodour reappears. A more sophisticated approach is to have an airborne agent react with the malodour so that it is no longer recognised by the nose as a malodour. This type of reagent is available in the market today from NeoScent International and may now be more easily obtainable thanks to Bill Gates.
Aged oak? No, wait… (YouTube/Gates Notes)
Smell is a powerful sense.
That’s why the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with a group of scientists at Firmenich, a 120-year-old perfume and flavour company based in Geneva, Switzerland. Firmenich makes Romance by Ralph Lauren. And now, it also makes a fragrance that smells, quite literally, like excrement. Firmenich scientists travelled to areas where sanitation is particularly bad to collect samples, to ensure they’re definitely working to cancel out the awful stench. The company received a $6.3 million grant from Gates’s foundation in 2013.
Bill Gates, who is on a mission to improve global sanitation for the 3 billion people suffering without it, smelled the terrible stench on a trip to Geneva. Then he smelled something else: the same foul odour, but combined with other smells selected to block the olfactory receptors that allowed him to detect that first smell of sewage. “Instead of stinky sewage, sweat, and ripe cheese, I sniffed a pleasant floral scent,” Gates writes in his blog.
“The approach is similar to noise-cancelling headphones which many people use to block out jet engine noise on flights,” Gates writes. “Electronics in the headsets create a sound wave that is 180 degrees out of phase with the ambient noise that needs to be blocked. This wave cancels unpleasant sounds and allows you to enjoy peace and quiet. Likewise, the ingredients in the fragrances developed by Firmenich inhibit the activation of the olfactory receptors sensitive to malodours. By blocking the receptors, our brains do not perceive the bad smells.”
The new odour-blocking fragrance may help fix a massive problem in poor areas across the world where lack of sanitation means people defecate outdoors. One billion people globally are without toilets, Gates writes, and even building them doesn’t help because the stink, especially coming from pit latrines, is so bad that “people continue to relieve themselves in the open where air is fresher,” Gates writes.
And no wonder, researchers note that the receptors in the nose, unlike other sources of sensation, have direct connections (called “axons”) that terminate in the brain. Smell is one of the oldest senses, and is crucial to understanding the world around us—particularly to identifying things that are dangerous or might make us sick, like the smoke from a house fire, or a spoiled piece of food.
Our noses have 350 olfactory sensors, only a few of which detect noxious smells, but if people are using facilities, or are in areas where there are malodours maybe present, odour-cancelling technology is the answer.
NeoScent International has patented solutions for the application of odour cancelling scents in any area subject to malodours. Reach out to us at +66 2559 2330 or visit us at www.neoscent.com.