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You can go to any city in a developing nation to get a similar experience. I've been in homes where the toilets abut the street and drain directly into an open

You can go to any city in a developing nation to get a similar experience. I've been in homes where the toilets abut the street and drain directly into an open sewer that runs along the street. Those sewers pool into a "pond" at the end of the street or subdivision. Then layer on the smells of farming, cooking, heating and animal processing and you get some really dominant odors. On one trip, my local hosts picked me up at the airport. I spent the ride wondering whether to ask them why the air smelled so incredibly bad. The sharp smells were a mix of sewage and burning flesh. But my hosts were happy, sharing treats with me and excited to have me visit. I felt it would be rude to ask such a question. (Location unnamed.) Another location was downwind of a sugarcane processing plant. You may think the sweet smell of sugarcane would be all that you would smell. You would be wrong. Olfactory adaptation set in pretty quickly though. I didn't notice the smells after the first couple of days. Our "smells" in the modernized west are tame by comparison.

bane 6y ago
In some countries without sufficient landfill systems, the pervasive smell of burning trash also fills the air...and you also get used to it pretty quick as well. It's both kind of amazing and kind of expected how quickly we adapt to different sent environments. Humans tend to saturate our ability to smell novel things quickly, which is why it's often hard to track things down by smell -- we quickly lose the ability to smell it.
RandallBrown 6y ago
I grew up like 10-15 miles from a sugar beet processing plant. It smelled like burning garbage when the wind was blowing in the right direction.
vram22 6y ago
> downwind of a sugarcane processing plant I've come across that smell while on trains or cars, from sugar mills nearby. I've heard it is from bagasse, a waste product of the factory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse

bane 6y ago

In some countries without sufficient landfill systems, the pervasive smell of burning trash also fills the air...and you also get used to it pretty quick as well. It's both kind of amazing and kind of expected how quickly we adapt to different sent environments. Humans tend to saturate our ability to smell novel things quickly, which is why it's often hard to track things down by smell -- we quickly lose the ability to smell it.

RandallBrown 6y ago

I grew up like 10-15 miles from a sugar beet processing plant. It smelled like burning garbage when the wind was blowing in the right direction.

vram22 6y ago

> downwind of a sugarcane processing plant I've come across that smell while on trains or cars, from sugar mills nearby. I've heard it is from bagasse, a waste product of the factory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse