What's the smelliest thing in the world? As the human nose can have wildly different sensitivities to odour molecules, smells are difficult to measure objectively.
Judges have ranked the French cheese Vieux-Boulogne as the smelliest, but you can’t directly compare this to other strong-smelling foods, such as durian fruit (pictured above).
For simple chemicals, you can measure smelliness in terms of the minimum detectable concentration of it. The worst-smelling chemical, thioacetone, is detectable at concentrations of just 0.02 parts per billion.
When it was first distilled in 1889, it almost immediately caused vomiting and unconsciousness to everyone within a half-mile radius.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Sally Thompson, Peterborough) 'What's the smelliest thing in the world?'
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