The ability to recognize the distinctive odors of volitile organic
compounds is certainly an asset to microbiologists and can aid in identifying
an organism, and it is also a valuable tool to organic & natural products
chemists. Characteristic mixtures of odors of esters, ketones, etc. are what
gives foods, perfumes etc. their desirable or unpleasant aromas, (i.e. fresh
vs. old fish, or a fresh bread/mouldy bread odor). Certainly there are
people who have highly developed odor-detecting abilities and they are mostly
employed in the food, flavor and fragrance industries. It is my
experience that university and industry safety offices tend to discourage
sniffing, and there is some merit in this. Like most old-time natural
products persons I often sniffed extracts, and on one occasion had one with a
very strong, pleasant chocolate aroma. Several weeks later when I got
cytotoxicity testing results back I learned that this extract was toxic at
10-4 ug/ml to a human cell line. In this case is is unlikely that the toxic
component was the volitile component, but you never know. And it was
mentioned in the recent book, "The Hot Zone", that some tissue culture flasks
that 'looked funny' were smelled to determine whether bacterial contamination
had crept in----and it was not until several days later after electron
photomicrographs had been taken that a strain of Ebola was detected in the
tissue culture. There are a few microorganisms which produce cyanide, the
'bitter almond' odor: I don't know if the amount in the headspace in the flask
would ever reach a lethal concentration. I don't think I'm ready to
completely stop sniffing yet, but there are some risks. Tom McCloud
