It smells like maple syrup...

Howdy all,

Okay, so yesterday (1/30/07), in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas, I'm at work and I hear no less than three times people sniffing the air and saying "Something smells like mapel syrup." I figured someone had reheated a curry, or over-microwaved something with sugar to the point it carmelized, or something along those lines.

I'm leaving work, turn on the radio and since NPR is doing their bi-monthly beg-a-thon, I have it on scan. Right before the radio changes stations again one of the DJs says "Now if we could just get rid of the stink of mapel syrup in th--" and the station changed. I still didn't think too much about it.

Then I got home, I start working on the bathroom sink, clogged with god-knows what, and put the radio on NPR. And the two hosts that hour, during their pledge requests, complain about how their studio smells like maple syrup. Now my attention was gained.

My wife gets home, I ask her how her day was. She says "Fine, except the place smelled like maple syrup for most of the day."

What the hell is up with the scent of Maple Syrup?!?!?

Is there some chemical that, when spilled, smells like maple syrup? Is there a new kind of jet that uses fuel that smells like syrup when burned? Is everyone just mowin' down on McGriddle sammiches? What?

Hrmm, no telling.

Found some links.

That Crazy New York Smell



Maple Sugar Mystery Smell

Now if only you had some waffles.

[edit on 31-1-2007 by Lysergic]

Awwww crap... I just googled "smells like maple syrup" and came up with this site where they describe the same phenomenon in New England. Later in the comments, after wave after wave of people chiming in that they could smell it too, someone mentioned a chemical called 'Benzoic Acid', C6H5COOH, which apparently produces a syrup-like odor.

It's a white crystalline powder and the industrial applications are as a corrosion inhibitor, as an additive to automotive engine antifreeze coolants and in other waterborne systems, as a nucleating agents for polyolefin, as a dye intermediate, as a stabilizer in photographic processing and as a catalyst. Wide range of benzoic esters are used as solvents, dying carrier, disinfectant additive, penetrating agent and pesticides and manufacturing other compounds.

Someone suggested on a different site that the maple syrup "gas" being used is harmless aside from the smell, but is being used to simulate a bio/chem terrorism attack, so that they can test what happens with prevailing winds, etc. If one can smell the scent, then one is in an area that will likely be affected by the fallout of such an attack.

Greeeeaaaat...

This is a Test.

It is only a Test.

If this had been an Actual Emergency,

You would be Dead!

Well, i heard something to the effect that New York may be sitting now on a caldera like Yellowstone and that would be precisely the smell you would get if something is brewing.

Originally posted by dgtempe
Well, i heard something to the effect that New York may be sitting now on a caldera like Yellowstone and that would be precisely the smell you would get if something is brewing.

Nah, it wasn't a sulpher type stench, it was more like if you heated up Mrs. Butterworth in the microwave and took a big whiff of it. A sort of sickly-sweet cloying smell... Calderas smell more like... really bad eggs is the best description I can come up with.

That aside, really? New York now on a caldera? Jeez... what next? That place is almost as volatile as Tokyo...

Originally posted by thelibra
....'Benzoic Acid', C6H5COOH, which apparently produces a syrup-like odor.

It's a white crystalline powder and the industrial applications are as a corrosion inhibitor, as an additive to automotive engine antifreeze coolants and in other waterborne systems, as a nucleating agents for polyolefin, as a dye intermediate, as a stabilizer in photographic processing and as a catalyst. Wide range of benzoic esters are used as solvents, dying carrier, disinfectant additive, penetrating agent and pesticides and manufacturing other compounds.

I work in a paper mill, a certain area there smells like maple cookies, I call it 'maple cookie lane'. It smells nice.
Seems like benzoic acid fits (according to the description).

Perhaps it's some mill or factory somewhere that let some 'essence de syrup du pan-cakes loose on to the air?

Originally posted by Toadmund
Perhaps it's some mill or factory somewhere that let some 'essence de syrup du pan-cakes loose on to the air?

Well, that's possible, but we're talking a pretty wide spread, and to such a degree of saturation that it penetrated the interior of multiple buildings over a 30-mile diameter, but thing is, the mills are all in Fort Worth, but no one I know it Fort Worth smelled it. It was all Arlington and east from there till downtown Dallas.

This is one of those things that's just wierd enough to get me paranoid.

Let's all make giant pancakes to combat the maple syrup!

There has to be more than a coincidence between this and the smell in NY.

Following one of Lysergic's links and sniffing (no pun intended..) around, I've come across this..

VIII. BIOLOGICAL TESTS BY THE GOVERNMENT ON AMERICAN CITIES

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Army simulated biological attacks in or over US cities, including Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. In one of the biggest tests, the Army sprayed 'simulant' bacteria into the air from a boat off of San Francisco. They used Serrata marcescens, an organism that is easy to detect. Several civilians became sick; one died. Two important things emerged from these experiments. One was that nearly everyone downwind acquired the bacteria. Secondly, it was learned later that it causes a variety of GI disorders. Even 'innocent' microorganisms can have unforeseen consequences.

In 1966, another bacterial agent was intentionally released into the New York subway by the CIA. Quickly, the entire system was infected by the piston action of trains moving air about the subway system. Elsewhere, the British had conducted a similar test with identical results in London two years earlier. The ease of spreading agents this way was graphically illustrated by Ted Koppel, ABC News, the week of October 4, 1999 (I saw only portions of the program).

www.uic.edu...

In my opinion the government may have learned from their mistakes and are now using extremely potent smells to determine how the enviroment effects airborne contaminates. Something as inane as a maple syrup smell would get literally everyone talking about the subject, no one would get ill and no one would think anything more than a maple syrup factory mishap..

Hmmm...sounds awfully familiar...

Maybe it's coming home to reproduce:



Have you checked your hemoglobin levels lately?

The Serratia marcescens test was sort of a mistake. Everyone at the time thought S. marcescens was innocuous, and in most cases it is, but if you have a compromised immune system, it is a nasty bug to get rid of.

I'm sure another reason for using it is that you don't need to use a microscope, it makes ruby-red colonies with a really distinctive color if it's cultured right.

The biggest bang for your buck as far as scent markers go are vanillins and mercaptans. Was the smell sort of vanilla-like?

Ok. Scent markers, big cities. Let's think...what could that be?

Here is a set of scenarios. It's pretty butt-awful, but you could use it as a starting point.

Postulate 1: It's not our gubmint

Postulate 2: It is a vanillin family substance being used as a tracer to track wind patterns and "dead zones" in a city to see where aerosols pool after release. You have more receptors for "generic vanilla-like odor" than any other, a human can just detect two teaspoons of vanilla extract poured on the center field of the superdome from a seat in the top rows. So you could pour out a gallon from the top of a building and smell it for miles.

By pouring some out on a day with weather patterns typical of the sort you want to test, you can station people all around the city with cell phones to call in when they first smell it. With enough people, this will allow you to spot the flow. Then you drive around every few hours to see if you can locate areas in mid-town (usually) where the air makes loops instead of moving out. These areas will be contaminated longer by an aerosol. A good time to try this is during an inversion where the air will sort of lay there without moving out for a while.

Postulate 3: you have something nasty to deliver by means of aerosol, but either it might take a while to get the job done, in which case you want to see how long an inversion holds an aerosolized substance in the city, or you want the biggest bang for your buck, in which case you're looking for an optimal spread

There are several substances that would really work well, if you're looking for "terror" more than "death" and you're working on the cheap.

Two of my candidates are tularemia and plutonium dioxide.

Tularemia is a great biological. It's not that hard to culture, you can come by the organism in the wild, and nearctica has an LD50 of 10 organisms. That means, with no more than 10 viable organisms inhaled of the nearctica subspecies of tularemia, you have a 50% chance of acquiring a full-blown lethal case of the disease.

If you can get a swipe of nearctica to culture, you can produce a much more aggressive and lethal tularemia but even wild tularensis is bad and will make you quite ill.

But wait, there's more. Tularemia can't be passed from one person to another. Only the people that are directly exposed to the aerosol will become ill, it isn't contagious between people. That means you could do it to city after city without provoking some sort of disease holocaust that might spread and get YOUR country.

Next is plutonium dioxide. Let's say you have a reactor somewhere, and you're able to separate out all the plutonium you need, but either it's really crappy plutonium with a lot of Pu240 that keeps you from using it as a bomb, or maybe you don't have the technical know-how. Plutonium is a lot tougher to make weapons out of than uranium. What to do with it?

Well, you can powder it under a helium (or argon, or neon) blanket, and seal the powder in a little cask filled with helium. Then, once you've spotted your optimal release point, just pop the top and throw. There will be a bright flash and a ball of fire, and the powder will become plutonium dioxide, an odorless, colorless gas. No matter how crappy your initial Pu was, you won't have to worry about the purity. The gas will cause death by massive pulmonary fibrosis in the immediate area, and cancers in the exposed populace for years to come. You won't die right away, but you'll worry about it for what's left of your life. Alternately, you can make metal chips out of it and light them on fire with a railroad flare. If I recall, there was a study done in the 70s that said if you were to pop off 8 ounces of chips on the Empire State Building's observation deck during a temperature inversion, over 100,000 people would die of cancer within the first year.

Neither of these causes widespread destruction or global effects. Neither can backfire (directly) on your country. But either of them will cause panic and hysteria in the exposed city.

Nerve Gas anyone?...


www.k12.nf.ca...

maybe Sarin...
toxprof.crcpress.com...


www.g2mil.com...


I could do this over and over, but you get the idea. Do a search.

Nerve Gas.

Maybe some one just farted!!!

Oh, good. This will make it much easier to sleep at night.

I sincerely hope it was just a test by "the good guys" rather than "the bad guys", assuming that those two distinctions even exist anymore.

Originally posted by thelibra
Oh, good. This will make it much easier to sleep at night.

I sincerely hope it was just a test by "the good guys" rather than "the bad guys", assuming that those two distinctions even exist anymore.

C'mon-

You know who's behind this!



They're after your chicken! OOOOOOOOOhhhh!

2PacSade-

Originally posted by thelibra
Awwww crap... I just googled "smells like maple syrup" and came up with this site where they describe the same phenomenon in New England.

Maple Syrup smell in New England huh ? Do you recall where Maple Syrup comes from ?

[edit on 2-2-2007 by RWPBR]

OMG, this is crazy, I live in Dallas, and for the past 2 weeks or so...whenever i walk to the back of my apartment I smell Maple Syrup!! I dont know what it is. I dont even eat the stuff.....
I wish I knew what it was coming from. Its starting to drive me crazy because its almost every day that im smelling it.

Happened again.

The Maple Syrup Smell... is Back for 2009!

In the past hour, we've received five emails alerting us to the alarming news: The sticky sweet scent of maple syrup has made its 2009 debut! So far, the smell appears to concentrated on the Upper West Side, but please let us know if you've suddenly gotten hungry for pancakes because the scent of breakfast has been so overpowering. Email us at tips(at)gothamist(dot)com.

Previous maple syrup incidents: October 2005, March 2006, November 2006, November 2007, and May 2008. Plus a November 2007 cameo on 30 Rock.

See also, NYC's Maple Syrup Smell Is Still A Mystery.



[edit on 11-1-2009 by loam]

Originally posted by thelibra
Awwww crap... I just googled "smells like maple syrup" and came up with this site where they describe the same phenomenon in New England. Later in the comments, after wave after wave of people chiming in that they could smell it too, someone mentioned a chemical called 'Benzoic Acid', C6H5COOH, which apparently produces a syrup-like odor.

It's a white crystalline powder and the industrial applications are as a corrosion inhibitor, as an additive to automotive engine antifreeze coolants and in other waterborne systems, as a nucleating agents for polyolefin, as a dye intermediate, as a stabilizer in photographic processing and as a catalyst. Wide range of benzoic esters are used as solvents, dying carrier, disinfectant additive, penetrating agent and pesticides and manufacturing other compounds.

Could be......I read from another blog somewhere that a chemical was mixed with salt for the roads and we know what salt does to the roads, this Benzoic Acid would reduce the damaging effects of the salt. furthermore, most of the reports from NY stated that the smell was strongest between 9:00 P.M. to 12:00 A.M., would This be about the time for salt trucks to be out.

NY officials still could not figure this out and where it came from.