Which chemical do I hate the most?

[@That_Chemist]

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[@pacificcoastpiper3949]

The sneezing agent story had me absolutely dying with laughter

[@MadMaltMasher]

Back in 1996 I used paradise A LOT. So much that I got used to it. Kind of liked it even.

[@MadMaltMasher]

However, I got burnt on it so I didn't really know that I stank horribly to everyone else for like 6 months.

[@PandamaticBreakcore]

Ah, you poor organic chemists. I'm on the physical end and work with arsenic, mercury, and chromium. While a pinch of these things will kill me dead, at least none of them smell bad (usually)!

[@cooldude7301]

I'd rather deal with bad smelling things than things that can kill me with no warning

[@q3st1on19]

​@@cooldude7301if you're lucky enough you get to deal with ✨both at the same time✨

[@Nutiiiiiiii]

It’s when they don’t smell bad, that’s when you’re gonna have a worse time than someone in the bathroom on Taco Tuesday shrieking as the chocolate demons coat the walls

[@euchale]

Radiation is fun, you feel fine and then you just die.

[@cooldude7301]

no you don't "just die". You can suffer for months before dying@@euchale

[@GerinoMorn]

We did butyric acid -> pineapple experiment in high school. I still remember the sheer terror that smell caused in me. The acid. The pineapple I would like to pour down my nose to smell it forever

[@phizc]

Also, it's kinda cool that if your shoes stink, you can fix that with a little vodka.

[@csgas0]

@@phizcwhat can’t you fix with a little vodka

[@alexia3552]

Wow, when a smell is so bad it triggers your fight-or-flight response

[@cooldude7301]

Butyric acid doesn't really smell that bad

[@unnamellie]

We had butyric acid under a glass dome in our school, and one day when our teacher wasn't at school we decided to lift up that dome. It wasn't a surprise smell, we live in farm region, with a lot of cows, so we knew what the smell was the second it reached our noses. It wasn't so bad, I mean, we all smelled cow poo at least once in our lifetime, but it was LINGERING there and we had to open all of our windows and turn on old vent shelf (I forgot what it's called in English, as well in my native language lmao) so the smell would go away as fast as possible

[@nobodynoone2500]

"please do not consume feet" Truly one of the chemists of our time.

[@Mikemk_]

"None of these are meant for human consumption." Butyric acid is a major flavoring agent in Hershey's Chocolate and parmesan cheese. Which, that might be a point in That Chemist's favor, but lots of Americans like it.

[@That_Chemist]

I like butyric acid in cheese but I specifically dislike the taste of Hershey's

[@ZijnShayatanica]

IS THAT WHY I HATE HERSHEY'S?! 🤯

[@welporajackwelp4899]

Yeah hersheys always leaves my throat feeling burned a bit and it doesnt taste all that good

[@ZijnShayatanica]

@@welporajackwelp4899 I always compared it to chocolate-flavoured acid reflux, lmaooooo.

[@hedgeearthridge6807]

It's because instead of using powdered milk, they use real milk (if I remember correctly). The real milk kinda spoils or rather cheese-ifies in the chocolate, so you get butyric acid. Non-Hershey milk chocolate just tastes like sugar to me, I actually prefer the sour cream flavor, as gross as it sounds. But I'd rather have dark chocolate, period. Milk chocolate is what you settle for when dark chocolate isn't available

[@Itz.zo22]

Wake up babe new THAT CHEMIST TIER LIST😩😩😩😩

[@78supergood]

Can't wait to create a concoction that contains the substances that aren't dangerous and use it as an April Fools Joke

[@Kualinar]

You are Evil !

[@indy9859]

Time to decide whom would you like to watch sneezing 😂

[@MandrakeFernflower]

Already exists look up something called liquidass

[@78supergood]

@@MandrakeFernflower I've been a victim of liquid ass but what will really add spice is the sneezing agent

[@Anklejbiter]

new pepper spray just dropped

[@Kualinar]

The two WORST smells that I ever smelled in my whole life, chronologically : 1) The feet of someone who probably wore his boots for at least a full month straight. 2) An unplugged fridge containing formerly frozen meat, sitting outside for over a month. I wonder what does H2Te smells like... That's the fourth entry of H2O, H2S, H2Se, H2Te, H2Po. Should also be pretty toxic.

[@fresanegra77]

Why is it toxic? I'm just a simple Schmoe Joe

[@WaluigiisthekingASmith]

@@fresanegra77 probably for the same reason H2S and H2Se are toxic, inhibiting cellular respiration.

[@milesmccollough5507]

@@fresanegra77 pnictogen hydrides are all horribly toxic because your body is an idiot and thinks the electrons in sulfur, selenium, and tellurium are the electrons from oxygen in water. oxygen is the top entry in the pnictogen group and, as you're probably well aware, H2O is a very abundant molecule in the body. H2S occurs naturally in us in small amounts as a signalling molecule as well. when large amounts of exogenous H2S (or even miniscule amounts of H2Se or H2Te) are inhaled, it rapidly permeates the tissues of your airways and into your mucus membranes. here, it gets taken up where water would, and it quickly starts interacting destructively with cells and their microstructures. it's basically like replacing the water in your engine with sodium silicate solution where as it tries to operate normally, the H2S or H2Se or whatever you've inhaled are just rocking around doing whatever they want nearly completely immune to metabolism, catabolism, or excretion. H2S in excess quickly paralyses respiratory muscles and then causes downstream neurological impairment to the extent that inhaling 2000PPM of H2S with *one breath* is enough to cause unconsciousness and, if unattended, rapid death. H2Se and likely H2Te as well are both so monstrously pungent at such low levels that I don't really think it'd be possible to withstand a genuinely dangerous atmosphere of it long enough to receive systemic toxicity but levels of H2S that are only slightly above the perceptive levels will actually deaden the olfactory nerve to its smell. one of the most common death scenarios associated with hydrogen sulfide inhalation is workers will smell it for a few moments, and then quickly be unable to smell it again. often this results in the assumption that the leak or whatever is causing the release of H2S has been solved, and the concentration builds up until the affected people don't even realize they have tunnel vision and can barely stand up.

[@GogiRegion]

@@fresanegra77Heavy metals are good at blocking nerves from my understanding.

[@christopherleubner6633]

H2Te is evil smelling, like H2Se but with a hint of garlic and burnt toast..😮

[@Tekdruid]

12:00 My hypothesis on the "sneezing agent": Either the airborne dust physically irritates nasal membranes, *or,* because that molecule _kind_ of looks generally like hormones found in human body, maybe it binds to histamine receptors and causes kind of an "allergic reaction"? Except in allergies, histamine is produced by the immune system, this would be more like a synthetic histamine analogue.

[@That_Chemist]

Only a couple other chemicals ever had the same sort of dust reaction - solid lithium aluminum hydride and 1,4-benzoquinone

[@GGeasyL2P]

​@@That_ChemistI've had the same working with benzoquinone, also had a lot of nose bleeds when i was working with it which im fairly sure was related

[@cezarcatalin1406]

@@That_Chemist Benzoquinone makes sense, it’s an irritant. Chloroacetone is too a lachrymatory agent. But it seems its catechol cousin is more potent at irritating noses.

[@janpetra1724]

Catechol-based, the molecule reminds me of urushiols, the allergens present in poison ivy, probably worse, given it can permanently bind amino acid residues with the chloroacetone part?

[@lefthandedspanner]

way back when I worked as a kitchen porter (14+ years ago) one job I had was cleaning out the grease trap under the main sink, which always smelt of parmesan cheese... which wouldn't be that odd, but for the fact we didn't have any parmesan cheese on site; that smell was butyric acid produced by the bacteria devouring rotten scraps of food everybody used to hate that job, but if you kept on top of it and did it every other week, it was quick and easy, taking 2-3 minutes at most

[@jmazoso]

I had to pop the lid off one of the under sink ones after it had sat for several months because the place had been closed.

[@cooldude7301]

Surely it can't be that bad

[@GODDAMNLETMEJOIN]

Grease trap is way up there on my list of worst smells.

[@UnLikqble]

as a lab technician I saw the title and I was like " NOOO POOR BUTANOIC ACID "

[@cooldude7301]

Yeah I don't understand why people hate butyric acid so much

[@marxunemiku]

worst thing i ever smelled was this mouse that crawled into a bottle of chocolate milk, drowned, rotted and liquified into the milk. I've smelled almost everything on this and they didn't even come close. it smelled like distilled essence of diarrhea

[@That_Chemist]

💀

[@cooldude7301]

That sounds wonderful. I would buy that and wear it as a perfume

[@MephistoMaxwell]

6:00 as someone who has also had to work with tetramethylammonium without initially being told that it was almost a nerve agent + could be fatal if spilled on the skin (was a hydroxide in aqueous solution), I feel this one

[@LabCoatz_Science]

Hydrogen selenide is pretty bad, but if we're talking about smell alone, it's got nothing on n-butyl isocyanide...

[@mukiex4413]

IIRC, butyric acid is why adults in the United Kingdom thinks Hershey's chocolate tastes like vomit. If you never eat one of those before adulthood, your brain correlates the acid with vomit. Children in the UK, trying Hershey's chocolate for the first time, don't have this problem.

[@davidg4288]

I never noticed that until the Europeans called it to my attention. I can now taste it but it doesn't bother me. Hershey's milk chocolate is really Hershey's buttermilk chocolate. This is not particularly off putting to me and I'm sure it's intentional. But if you were expecting whole fresh milk and you got buttermilk you would, um, hesitate. Cheap microwave popcorn is perfectly edible to me but my microwave is ruined for days by the smell. Whisky / Whiskey can also contain diacetyl, this can be OK or a flaw depending on how much there is. Most distillers try to limit diacetyl.

[@cooldude7301]

There's nothing wrong with vomit chocolate. Yum

[@Larsus1312]

I use pyridine together with Karl Fischer solution A and methanol quite often to make a sulfurdioxide solution, and it reeks so much pyridine is by far the worst smelling chemical together with acetic chlorides

[@ptorq]

When I was in high school, one week my chemistry instructor had a "pick your own lab" assignment. We got to do a lab experiment of our own choosing (he still had to approve them first). I decided that a friend of mine and I would make esters, so we first headed into the lab's stock shelves to see what alcohols and organic acids we had available. Now, he had insisted we do this in the fume hood, which was this little rolling deal that attached to an exhaust port in the ceiling with a hose. So we put our reagents in the hood, turned it on, and got to work. We had not particularly known this prior to starting work with it, but one of the acids we found was butyric acid, and saying butyric acid smells like cheese or feet is ... well, it may be true, but it's not how I would describe it, because that's butyric acid at a fairly low concentration, and this was neat butyric acid. I want you to think back to elementary school,. If somebody got sick in the hallway after drinking milk at lunch ... that smell, my friends, is primarily due to butyric acid. It smelled like distilled vomit is what I'm trying to say. But we were working in the fume hood so it wasn't TOO bad (except that just handling the bottle made our hands smell like it for the rest of the day). Except that at the end of class when we disconnected the fume hood hose from the exhaust and turned it off ... we sorta forgot to put the reagents back in the closed stock cabinets. So the butyric acid sat there in the hood for the next three class periods stinking up the place until he realized what that smell was and where it was coming from. We got chewed out pretty good for that.

[@DeutscheDemokratischeRepublik]

i like how the sneezing agent goes: HO-HO-O Cl!!!!

[@kaboom4679]

Way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth , selenium was used in the rectifiers of electronic power supplies, even in consumer electronics . A blown selenium rectifier reeks without let up , to an obscene degree . While they stopped using these in consumer electronics , they hung around in commercial and industrial settings for some time . We had equipment that contained them , and you could smell the things from some distance despite being in a sealed housing . Opening up the equipment was an assault on your olfactory nerves . We were absolutely forbidden to bring the blown power supplies inside , on pain of slow dismemberment with plastic cutlery . We kept the blown supplies in a metal bin , down wind from the building , along the far fence . We also improvised carriers for them on the vehicles , because bringing one inside the vehicle would render the vehicle a living hell for days , maybe a month if it sat inside the vehicle over a hot weekend .

[@DielectricVideos]

I actually have a selenium rectifier! I used it with an old vacuum tube filament transformer and a random (modern) 12V-to-USB adapter to charge my phone a few years ago. Thankfully the rectifier never blew up during the time I was using it, so I was spared from the legendary stench.

[@DielectricVideos]

Here's a video showing the rectifier in action: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kJW2iZqentVqitksi=gtqA0nsMz2GqzxjR&t=496

[@Mejsiek]

I'm not gonna say a thing about thiols because thanks to them I made part of my PhD but boy i hate esters. They were always on organic synthesis classes for students and everytime they made them, especially isoamyl acetate, the whole building was reeking synthetic bananas, apples etc. I don't care if people say "they have pleasant fruity smell", try enjoying it while all students are distilling it in near industrial scale.

[@That_Chemist]

I like isoamyl acetate :)

[@Mejsiek]

@@That_Chemist >:(

[@ChromicQuanta]

I hope there aren't any bee nests/hives near that lab.

[@penumbrium]

everyone hates butyric acid till I make the ethyl ester

[@jeffchandler6285]

Ah the smells that make criminals go, maybe not this house to rob. Humm... a possible sneezing pepper spray without all pepper spay heat?

[@That_Chemist]

sneeze spray

[@RaulFelixS]

In my opinion the sweetish Butyl and Amyl alcohols are some of the worst possible stenches, much worse than their universally hated oxidized counterparts, Butyric and Valeric acids.

[@That_Chemist]

isoamyl alcohol is sort of yuck as well

[@oitthegroit1297]

What do they smell like?

[@RaulFelixS]

Awfully sweet, with a hint of bananas, like some kind of car paints.

[@That_Chemist]

armpit banana

[@christopherleubner6633]

Yup used butanol to recrystalize monomethylamine hydrochloride to separate out the diethyl and trimethylamine hydrochloride. It was sorta sickly sweet. If you combine it with butyric acid it makes butyl butyrate which smells sort of a mix of artificial grape flavor and butterscotch candy.😅

[@baronblackdragon9078]

The worst thing I’ve ever smelled was at camp, workers came with truck and pumped all the shit out of the porta potty

[@albertyu750]

I remember the butyric acid esterification experiment. TBH, I didn't mind the butyric acid that much. Unpleasant yes, but not downright revolting. My uni was located in a pretty cold area of the US and we did this experiment in early March, so still quite cold. Have to wear boots kind of cold. But the chem lab building had central heating cranked up to max, and the lab went for 4 hours, so all of us students would get really hot and stuffy, especially in lab coats, goggles, the usual PPE. The butyric acid stench would get stuck to our sweaty bod by the end of the experiment, even with the fume hood running. As I came back to the dorms after the lab class, my dormmate got a whiff of me and complained that my boots stank. I got used to the smell after 4 hours so I didn't see what the fuss was. Still get reminded of my "athlete's foot" from him (we're good friends now) 8 years later.

[@soopersooper3291]

As a hobbyist mechanic, it's used gear oil from the differential. I swear if it gets on my hands I can smell it when I poop for like three days. It smells like a dumpster. One time I reheated Five Guys in my oven and the house was filled with this noxious gas, I think this was acrylene or something like that. The worst thing I've ever tasted is pure dextromethorphan hydrobromide.

[@bcubed72]

When I was a kid, I used to ride these old wooden roller-coasters. They had steel wheels, rolling on steel plated tracks, and they kept everything lubed with a sticky grease with a sulphureous smell. 30 years later, when handling gear oil for the first time, I immediately recognized the smell as the one from my youth at the amusement park. So, gear oil smells like antique roller-coasters.

[@nobodynoone2500]

Gear oil is often sulfur based. Not a fan. Modern Gasoline smells pretty bad too. It smelled better until about 2000 or so, so much that some people used to really like the scent.

[@oitthegroit1297]

What does DXM HBr taste like?

[@soopersooper3291]

@@oitthegroit1297 intensely bitter

[@circeciernova1712]

​​​@@oitthegroit1297It's very bitter, but Denatonium Benzoate is far stronger. I'd rather take straight DXM HBr powder than deal with licking a Switch game.

[@bitterlemonboy]

I'm actually curious about how that chemical on S tier smells. I know it's really bad, but I just want to know what it smells like...

[@That_Chemist]

its sort of like if you took the first sensation of when you are about to vomit and it just stayed like that for the whole day

[@Itsadrianyay]

jesus, man.

[@vffa]

​@@That_Chemistthat almost made me vomit. Now I know your game - I am onto you.

[@cooldude7301]

It's just smells

[@MinnesotanMysticism]

Please make a sequel with the chemicals you love!

[@piesystem]

Related to the SeH2: I had/have to work with multiple grams of dimethyl diselenide during my PhD and personally I think it's also in the S-Tier. It smells like a mixture of rotten carcass, diarrhea after having 10 beers the evening before plus, and the typical smell after exploding fireworks. It is so potent and despite its high boiling point one single drop of the reaction mixture on a TLC will make your whole bench smell like you're actively boiling it outside of the fume hood. Exactly as you described it for some compounds, it does not leave your nose or anything else and you are doomed if you contaminate anything which is not cleanable (e.g., the oil vacuum pump smells like it 1.5 years later). I had to put the whole rotovap into the fume hood because the smell was so bad and long-lasting. At one time I had to dispose a larger amount of organic waste heavily contaminated with it, and when I poured it into the waste container, the whiff which hit me was so brutal that I involuntarily gagged like I was going to vomit. I only experienced that once before in my lifetime. It also seems to be quite toxic. Surely a fun compound to work with!

[@visiblur]

Someone from the 9th grade spilled butyric acid in lab class when I went to 0th grade. The entire school smelled horrible. That's 17 years ago and I still remember it vividly. I've worked with it since, but that first meeting with it just stuck with me.

[@topazzius6822]

When I was in undergrad I TA'ed Orgo lab, I remember we were doing an experiment with Dichloromethane and some student vaporized the stuff outside of the fume hood and we all ended up having a coughing fit for the next several minutes as I opened all of the lab windows. It didn't really smell like anything out of the ordinary, it just made it harder to breath.

[@GogiRegion]

Butyric acid is not the only chemical on this list to be in cheese. Diacetyl is actually a fermentation product in some bacteria, and can be found in some cheeses like Brie, Camembert, or Gouda. It’s also in buttermilk, and is a big part of where the buttery taste comes from.

[@stephenjacks8196]

Actual butter is 3-hydroxy-2-butanone. "popcorn lung" is due to the butanedione becoming ketene.

[@civilprotectionofficer858]

i dont like to learn chemistry, but im fascinated by it, i guess i love chemistry, but my memory fails me every time

[@That_Chemist]

honestly you can take the stuff that you find to be useful and discard the overly complicated stuff - you might as well derive value without worrying about all the obscure stuff that is harder to connect with

[@zanebertoli4589]

As others are saying, butyric acid is awful, and acetyl chloride. I worked with phenoxyacetyl chloride, that was particularly awful. But the worst thing I've ever smelled is DMS, Dimethyl sulfide (not sulfate) it was like incinerated feces mixed with very rotten milk.

[@user-zl1qv6tf1o]

I don't know anything about chemistry, but I still enjoy watching these tier list videos and even though I have no idea what half the words mean, these stories are still so entertaining. Great stuff man!

[@andrewgerchak2282]

I LOVE THIS CHANNEL

[@jordan_markov]

The smell of cyclopentadiene reminded me of synthetic body stench.. 🤢

[@That_Chemist]

it smells to me like Ph-C(triplebond)-C-Br almost exactly

[@paulperry7091]

If the phosgene warning poster at 5:43 looks strangely familiar, it's because it was drawn by Doctor Seuss.

[@Lord0of0Minnegard]

Diacethyl is also common as a secandary metabolite in alcoholic fermentation. Some beers types (I'm looking at you Czechs) consider it desireable in small amounts. But it's at least one of the easiest misstastes you will be able to identify olfactorily

[@Exist64]

I'm not into feet, I swear, but I see why some people are and I think we should not shame them. Also informative tier-list, thank you!

[@GerinoMorn]

The sneezing agent seems to be 4-(Chloroacetyl)catechol if someone wants to do some research xD

[@kaboom4679]

Pretty easy to come by , seems every chemical supply outlet has it in stock and at varyingly reasonable prices . Considering it's potential for creative misuse and outright blatant fuckery , this chemical is scarier than most of the stench agents mentioned , especially if you have diarrhea .

[@NipkowDisk]

That's what I traced it down as.

[@robertlapointe4093]

The worst olfactory assault I ever experienced was while hiking the Hoh river valley in Olympic National Park. On the second day of the hike we came across a dead elk that had been marinating in the temperate rain-forest for a week or more. Note, I am familiar with a number of heavy-weight stenches, such as phosphines, isocyanides and dienes (I would put ethylidene norbornene a notch under the elk).

[@NormReitzel]

In my terpene synthesis work, I often had to use pyridine as a solvent. I would gpo home and my wife insisted I stay outside O Outside by the pooL until "I didn't reek!" I was lucky I didn't have to sleep in a tent.

[@pakey423]

I've worked with all the acylchlorides, from C2 to C18 and although isovalerylchloride smells bad, hexanoylchloride is way worse. For some reason hexanoylchloride is the pinnacle of the acylchlorides regarding their smells; from C7 to C18 the smell becomes less and less offensive and the smells of C2 to C5 are less overpowering, at least in my personal opinion. But then, I don't really have a problem with the smell of pyridine or triethylamine, so there might be something wrong with my nose. 😆 On the other hand, methyl methacrylate has a smell that I really despise.

[@Outwhere]

Wait till you've smelled ethyl acrylate! Probably the worst chemical I smell on a regular basis. Chloromethyl methyl sulfide and chloromethyl phenyl sulfide are among the worst (and most persistent) compounds I've worked with, but the rotting cabbage smell of a Swern oxidation made me realise that my sulfur compounds were actually OK.

[@spudjiii]

I used to work in flavour and fragrance chemicistry, Some of these chemicals I had to smell test. So not just smell, but compare them to samples, consider if something "stinks right". The worst thing was some meat flavouring compound and I was just pouring from one bottle into another, in a fume hood, with a respirator. And i was still gagging. it was vile I hated that job

[@AmethystMoon444]

Those sound awful but I’d like to see them compared to the worst thing I’ve ever smelt. First is grease traps, it smells worse than sewage and it’s so gd potent, there’s no escaping it, but even worse than that was an employee I had. Picture a pig that’s been dead for 6 months, the corpse was laid out in 100 degree sun for that time, then someone puked on it, threw taco seasoning on it, and then someone with c diff took a shit on it. He smelled just like that. He would walk into the store for 2 minutes but the path he would walk would linger for an hour after he left. My boss made me fire him which required me taking him into a secluded room to tell him, I couldn’t even finish my speech on why he was fired because I had to run to the bathroom to vomit.

[@ItsRubyGD]

how people get that smelly i will never know

[@ItsRubyGD]

like i get you can be used to your own smell but is there no limit?

[@bradfjord]

I've never met a human that smells that bad, but I can confirm that commercial kitchen grease traps smell very very unique. Had to have a tactical cigarette after smelling it

[@AmethystMoon444]

@@ItsRubyGD he seemed surprised about it. His excuse was his clothes but clothes can only get that smelly if you’re that smelly.

[@ItsRubyGD]

@@AmethystMoon444 he must have been that smelly for a very long time to become noseblind to it

[@whoever6458]

I've worked with a few of those chemicals and I'm thankful for the good fume hood. We always went, yuck, and greatly lowered the fume hood, but we were warned that these things would smell bad so we were prepared to quickly lower the fume hood if we smelled anything, probably so that the people who spent more time in the lab than we did wouldn't have to smell it for a long time. I wish I could have gone on in chemistry but I got in trouble for wanting to study cannabinoids. Too bad, especially since they seem to smell quite nice.

[@bcat010]

Worst smell ive ever come across was from some poor guy in the ER whose colostomy bag broke. Really made me question what I like so much about working in healthcare.

[@NebulonRanger]

6:10 Tetramethylammonium: [exists] Biochemistry, holding up hand: "Is this acetylcholine?"

[@_fandomcatcrazy_823]

Been waiting for smthn like this ngl

[@coreysayre1376]

If he thinks feet people are weird, just wait till he finds out about the armpit people!

[@nilnileer]

BLEGHHH WTFF 💀💀💀💀💀💀

[@penguin8572]

They're the same people usually, anyone into feet would be into armpits bc the smell he mentioned is in both places. Anywhere with sweat has that smell. Plus, pits don't step on the ground, so in my opinion it's a less weird thing to be into.

[@DoctorDeadMoth]

​@@penguin8572bro what? Thats not how it works at all. The fetish isnt based of the smell lmao. As a foot guy myself i can firmly say thats not the case

[@thediamondgamer8337]

Wait until he finds about feet worship 💀💀

[@jonbrodie1442]

Decanol is my least favorite chemical, it smells like nothing else, like rotting plastic or something. It's extremely potent and slow evaporating , spilling just a drop will stink up a room for hours. It also dissolves into your skin and even the mucus membrane of your nose if you smell too much at once and then the smell will literally be stuck on you or in your nose.

[@grebulocities8225]

I once sprayed myself with a significant quantity of it and octanol while making a mix of amines at my previous job. It was not great, and took numerous washings to get out of my clothes, but I'll take it over amines any day!

[@jonbrodie1442]

wow that sounds terrible, I hope I never get it on my clothes. I haven't smelled that many amines but I guess I was just traumatized by people being careless with decanol on a daily basis.

[@defenestrated23]

The worst smelling things I've encountered are pyridine (imagine alien rotting meat/fish) and the collection of whatever was in the undergrad chemical freezer that smelled like burning dirty diapers (I think the main contributor was isocyanide). But the *weirdest* bad smell I encountered was (IIRC) alpha-Phenylpiperidine-2-acetamide (methylphenidate intermediate). It kinda like a cross between rotten celery and burnt plastic, but more extreme. This was over a decade ago and I still can recall it vividly, that's how weird and intense it was. The next intermediate, ritalinic acid, smells pretty nice to me, like wet leaves in the fall. AKA "Snippid" according to Calvin and Hobbes. I've also observed there appear to be people that hate sulfides but don't mine amines, and people that hate amines that don't mind sulfides. Like NMe3, NEt3, DIPEA, pyridine, all make me retch. But the Me2S from Swern just smells like stronk cabbage to me. It's still bad, but doesn't make me reflexively gag.

[@papanyanz]

DMSO when it's impure or after some heat treatment is sometimes horrible as well.

[@xYaYYaJx]

You've really upped your meme and presentation game even further! This was a joy to watch, not just for the chemistry. Very entertaining

[@Akoenu2]

Worst for me was Cyclooctyne. It persisted in my nose for weeks. Anything coming into contact with it had to be kept in the fume hood, bagged several times over, and sealed in a container. Including gloves, etc. Any waste solvents had to be bottled up separately as well. Absolutely horrible.

[@erics3737]

As a teenager back in the 70's when you could buy anything, my hobby was chemistry and I acquired aluminum powder and a piece of selenium. So it was easy to make aluminum selenide... and on to a solution of Hydrogen Selenide. Vile. Now I swore I wouldn't ever make cyanide due to it being deadly... to my horror I later learned Hydrogen selenide is 20X more deadly. No fume hood, but always outside with a fan. Still, worse smell ever. PS, years later got a piece of tellurium and.... used just the tiniest bit with aluminum. Far worse. Ah youth, ah stupidity.

[@LogicalQ]

Is that (E )-2-butene-1-thiol, or is there a skunk in your trunk?

[@uncleal]

Liquid yellow butanedione has wonderfully green vapor during distillation. It also has overwhelming pulmonary toxicity -popcorn lung.

[@spackal2946]

I breathed in pyridine at work for the first time a couple months ago (coop student) I had to go home I felt really queasy which felt weird because it didn’t seem that bad but my stomach was not enjoying it

[@michaelfarrell6448]

I'm self diagnosis hyperostisis and one of the most potent and awful smells I've got to experience was urea nitrogen in a lawn fertilizer. It penetrated the plywood shelf it sat on and I had to toss them

[@RiceProfELEC571]

tert-Butylthiol. During my graduate research I had to coat a surface with tert-butyl mercaptan self-assembled monolayer, the shortest of the short chain alkanethiols. It only came in 1 liter or larger containers with an ampule seal. Opened it in a wafer hood instead of a proper chemical being in the electrical engineering department and nearly knocked myself out. Because I chucked some waste in a nearby trashcan and did not leave it in the hood, the next morning the smell had gone throughout an entire wing of the building and when I arrived I saw everyone standing outside because they thought there was a natural gas leak.

[@mackenzieonyx7586]

lmfao duuude you are kiiillin it w them funnies 😂😂- ur internet/meme-ish humor is top-tier. how u TOEEE that line of including just the right amnt of em and completely bypassing the whole cringe and obnoxious thing is beyond me lol- well done! bravo, bravo!!👏*😅😂 *except make em feet.. clapping feet😋

[@LiborTinka]

I remember reading that some mercaptans (specifically butylselenomercaptan) posses the horrible smell being a combination of rotten cabbage, old kitchen waste and sewers.

[@mellowmonster3073]

Story from when I was in high school. One of the Chem teachers was replacing labels on containers, when they spilled a one gallon drum of butyric acid that then leaked. The top two floors of my high school smelt of bad parm for 4 months.

[@cooldude7301]

Yum

[@robertstratton6444]

Geosmin in well water totally nails the wet dog thing and is disgusting. In perfumes for petrichor, it can be true-to-life but there are certain concentrations that just creep me out. Here's one...not horrifying but persistent and low level disconcerting. Spill amyl alcohol on your hand and see how long it takes to get rid of the weird smell.

[@krisreddish3066]

Do a best smelling chemical list. One of my favorites I found in the Army when they tested our gas masks for fit and function. Isoamyl acetate. Traces of it were used in many products and solvents sold for home use that promote anti gunk properties. One you covered here a bit, methyl butyrate is almost worth the smell of throw up filling the room before hand. Had a mix of random terpenes for a project that created acetates and esteres that carry the smell of assorted Pez by accident. The smell was worth the oops on that one. This one is a trip, so the smell of dmc. I have loved the smell since I spilled some from a drinking bird thing as a kid. One of my favorites solvents despite some bad juju on the MSD tells me not to smell too deep or too long.

[@stefangadshijew1682]

Chloroacetocatechol is _hilarious_. I fucking love it. Open under the fume hood wearing a mask, wash your hands, remove the mask, still sneeze for 10 minutes. Honestly, feels pretty great. We were going to produce Noradrenaline from it but decided it's not worth the bother. I would have loved it. Another one of our products is 4-n-Hexylresorcin, which makes you itch, a lot. Itch powder and sneeze powder, I would have been so happy. (4-n-Hexylresorcin is also a common preservative in shrimps. It is pink in solution. It is not allowed to add pink color to shrimps. It is however totally allowed to add pink preservative to your shrimps. Whoever came up with that probably earned himself a raise.)

[@pellestorck3776]

Working with perfume chemicals I had about 1000 or so to play with. Some that smelled fantastic but most of them not so good in pure form. Some smell extremely bad, like scatole, and need to be heavily diluted before use. A few though were unbearable for me like green ether (isoamyl phenyl ethyl ether), but the worst was acetoin the one you call diacetyl. In pure form it is absolutely nauseating and the odour permeats everything. I kept it in a fridge in double bottles in double plastic bags and it still made the whole house stink. Had to throw it away in the end.

[@Ice_Karma]

IMO, worse than diacetyl is whatever replaced it in most brands of microwave popcorn, after a Colorado man won a lawsuit claiming eating 2-3 bags of microwave popcorn a day for ten years caused him to develop 'popcorn lung'. I could put up with diacetyl, but its replacement is utterly intolerable. (As much as I hate Walmart, I like their Great Value microwave popcorn, because it at least claims to be made with butter, instead of butter simulant, and doesn't stink me out of my apartment.)

[@kenshin891]

I thought popcorn lung was with the workers in food processing?

[@Ice_Karma]

@@kenshin891 I thought there were more -- like, 3-5 -- but after hitting the Googles, I can only find _one_ case of someone who _might_ have developed popcorn lung after eating 2-3 bags a day of microwave popcorn every day for ten years, a Colorado man named Wayne Watson. In 2007, he won seven million dollars in a civil suit against the company that made the popcorn he ate and the two supermarkets he bought it from. Being a civil suit, he only had to prove it was more likely than not that the microwave popcorn caused his popcorn lung. This scared makers of microwave popcorn into discontinuing diacetyl's use. I'll edit my original comment to reflect this better.

[@mhoorn9532]

I dont mind amines as much as most people, i think concentrated ammonia solutions are worse. I worked with several stinky sulfur compound, but i have grown used to the H2S and SO2 type of smells. However, i used thioacetic acid on multi kilogram scale… that stuff makes me wanna gag, it smells like the sharp vinegar smell like acetic acid, but with the thiol/sulfur smell added on top…Its also quite aggressive and toxic

[@NormReitzel]

Triethylamine only a C? That is one of my least favorite bases!

[@WetDoggo]

I was surprised as well 😂 any experience with 3-Ethynylpyridene? I hope it smells quite fishy while also causing severe lacrimation 😂

[@cooldude7301]

Why do U hate fish

[@WetDoggo]

@@cooldude7301 cuz fish ain't fresh if you can easily smell it from a mile 😂

[@JulianA-tr6pt]

When selenium diodes blow up in old electronics, I've heard it creates quite a smell. Never experienced it myself, but have preemptively replaced some to avoid this.

[@number4cat1]

My only experience with organic chemistry was three semesters in college 50 years ago, but I remember Pyridine. I can still smell it.

[@nooblangpoo]

Tom was right, Chemists do keep grudges.

[@jackhinkley6162]

I would agree about pure butyric acid and isobutyric acid but triethylamine and pyridine are not that bad. Being a process chemist in a research group at a certain university Med Chem Dept I would use pyridine for a solvent in liter amounts for certain reactions with no problem. Thionyl chloride and phosphorus oxychoride, which I have used as solvents in liter amounts for certain reactions would qualify for the the list probably A tier. I would suggest that thiophenol and especially thiomorpholine would go in the top tier. Best was an unplugged refrigerator filled with improperly stored and decomposing chemicals which I opened by accident then closed immediately and quickly called HASMAT. It was grim. P.S. I did not expect to see a commercial but one does what one must.

[@frtzkng]

Ah yes, trimethylamine. Made me chug a bunch of dilute hydrochloric acid into an organic waste bin because I almost vomited from the stench of some spoiled fish. Then thought, well may also disinfect it while I'm at it and put in some bleach as well. Completely forgetting that bleach plus acid releases a whole bunch of chlorine. Well at least that bin was as sterile as it's ever been.

[@ZNP420]

Best Monday morning when That Chemist releases a new tier list!😊

[@congruentcrib]

I don’t know what the material was, but the belt of our air compressor at work started to burn and it had one of the worst smells ever. Like a combination of burning plastic, moldy rubber, sulfur, and a concoction of random chemicals burning. The smell was so bad that it felt like it filled you up. For hours after it, I felt like cheap Chinese rubber was inside my nose, throat, and stomach. It ruined my morning because I was going to each breakfast, but felt too sick to eat

[@braceharvey]

Reminds me of my adv inorganic synthesis lab in college, a few experiments I had to work with acetonitrile and for some reason for only me it seems, it smells exactly like Fritos and I hate the smell of Fritos. Nobody else thought it smelled like them and I don't really have an explanation for that still, but it was uncanny.

[@huzzzzzzahh]

I wonder if butanedione is one of those genetic things like cilantro. Because I also find that smell absolutely repulsive, and back when I was a nicotine addict any butter popcorn type flavor vapes were unsmokable to me unless I was *desperate*

[@TheCaptainLulz]

The only one of those Ive ever encountered is pyridine, its used in some welding anti-spatter sprays, and yeah, dead fish all over the place.

[@hedgeearthridge6807]

Cast iron cookware has to be seasoned before first use, so I rubbed flaxseed oil (food grade linseed oil) on the pots and pans and baked them in the oven for several hours. It filled my house with what was like tear gas or something, it just burned my throat, eyes, sinuses, everything. After consulting ChatGPT, I found out that chemical was Acrolein. Absolutely sucked, 0/10, I'm buying a full face respirator and appropriate filters if I ever do it again. It worked amazingly well though, it left a beautiful brown glaze on the metal that was super non-stick

[@cooldude7301]

U seasoned your lungs too

[@bazooka93]

Triethylamine definitely hits the top tier for my most hated chemical. Iuse it quite a lot in a HPLC lab for making mobile phases and the worst part of it is pH adjustment, which can take a long time. TEA makes it feel way longer. It's not much better when diluted, then it smells like someone just enjoyed a happy end massage in the lab.

[@christineg8151]

Most of the chemicals I use in lab are not horrible, but pyridine and TEA are... Not my favorites. Amines suck. I used to make a lot of handmade soaps for sale, though, and one of my popular ones was neem oil soap. Great as an anti-insect soap, so a lot of gardeners love it. Neem oil does not smell good, but a lot of the things that make it smell bad are part of what makes it useful. Given the fact that a lot of descriptions claim neem smells like onion or garlic (I disagree, btw), I'm going to guess it's a lot of sulfur compounds making up the odor, but I haven't been able to find a good chemical breakdown, aside from "complex", aside from the fatty acids present. A lot of the time when you make soap with oils that have specific desirable qualities, you'll make the soap via "hot process" saponification, basically cooking it until the reaction is done, then adding the "good" oil at the end so it's not as affected by the sodium hydroxide. The first time I did the neem oil soap, I was planning to make my soap this way. I opened the bottle of neem, smelled it, and thought, smells like coffee mixed with soy sauce. Not a great smell, but not as bad as advertised. I measured it out, started cooking the rest of my soap, and about five minutes later, I just couldn't take it and dumped the whole quantity of neem in at once. That smell gets into *everything*, and it *clings*. It was so bad! Thankfully, once saponified, the smell fades and you're left with a lovely soft ivory bar with no scent. But in the meantime, I was gagging every time I walked past it.

[@jamesq39]

Synthesizing that pineapple ester was one of my favorite times in Organic Lab.

[@swixpa212]

One day i was working with some selenium compound (i think methylbutylselenide or similar to that) and i accidentally smelled a huge amount of it. It felt like my nose, throat and airways were slowly getting paralyzed one by one and then it just suddenly went away like nothing happened. Selenium compounds are truly a unique experience

[@lman6920]

Most entertaining chem KZbinr! Love to see you getting sponsors!!!

[@Felixkeeg]

NEt3 and Pyridine are not great but really not THAT bad.

[@WooShell]

Many years ago, I had the unfortunate opportunity to explode an old Selenium rectifier. My workshop stank like hell for a week, and people were looking at me weird when I went shopping even after a thorough shower.

[@partlycloudy7707]

I work in a medical microbiology lab, i often find myself questioning what I'm doing dairly frequently. We use bio safety cabinets, which are built to keep biologics in, not fumes. Nothing quite like half rotten organ smells in the morning 🙃

[@davidshelly9142]

I was very unpopular in my lab one day. A reaction I was running used 100 ml triethylamine as a solvent and I then had to rotovap when it was done.

[@disruptivegarage]

but what if we combine them

[@That_Chemist]

NileRed detected

[@johnthomas2970]

ThatChemist making gagging and spluttering is the new “fWHOOMP”

[@도움-l3m]

Every ingredients & Byproducts from swern oxidation were my kryptonite. Dimethyl sulfide, oxalyl chloride and triethylamine, etc...yuck.

[@Outwhere]

Indeed, absolutely intolerable (although I can live with triethylamine).

[@chem525]

Oxalyl chloride is horrible. Using that by the kg now.

[@richardwebb5317]

I moved from farm work (sheep and cattle rearing) to chemistry. Once selenium was a huge worry due to dietary deficiency - it's a household word in a farmhouse, then it became something I'd rather avoid, and did.

[@miriamg3689]

Glove guilt is SO REAL!! did tons of SPSS in my undergrad lab and the wait times between washing steps were always just long enough that you really wanted to take ur gloves off so bad but also didn't want to because of glove guilt!!!

[@Nickjuuh1989]

We had an experiment during my BSc, where we did a Paal-Knorr synthesis with P4S10. That was the worst I've ever smelled

[@nilnileer]

"B for Boy, i hate your guts! Went me flying off my bed.