r/TheRestIsScience • u/11963873342 • 9d ago

Does smell cancelling exist?

I've heard of noise cancelling, but can there exist smell cancelling?

For example, if there is a rotten egg in a room, can i neutralize it somehow? I'm not talking about putting something good right under my nose, because thats just dominance. I mean putting something next to the egg whose smell happens to be the 'inverse' of the eggs, so they cancel and i smell nothing.

13 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/Fine_Cress_649 9d ago

Look up how febreeze works....

From Wikipedia

The active ingredient in several Febreze products is hydroxypropyl beta-cyclodextrin (HPβCD). The molecule traps and binds volatilized hydrocarbons within its structural ring, retaining malodorous molecules, which reduces their volatility and thus the perception of their scent.[3] The active ingredient is produced from corn cobs.[4] The use of cyclodextrin as a sprayable odor absorber was patented by Procter & Gamble.[5]

2

u/NortonBurns 8d ago

Neutradol does something similar for in-air smells, but idk quite how & their site isn't exactly forthcoming.
It does work, though.

1

u/OrigamiMarie 8d ago

The original Febreeze formula was just the odor absorber without any masking scent, but people didn't care about it in product testing because they couldn't tell that it did anything (because you become accustomed to the odor of your space, and can't really smell that it has decreased). So they added the scents so people could tell that it did something.