“She Landed In The Hospital”: 57 Smells That Seem Out Of The Ordinary But Are Actually A Sign Of Danger

Toast or cigarette smoke when none is present (called phantosmia, or phantom smells) can signal something minor, like a sinus/respiratory infection or major, like a epilepsy/neurological event.

Bitter almond smell can mean cyanide is present. Not everyone can smell it, however. Uncommon and unlikely to encounter, but thought I’d mention anyway.

If you’re on your phone, laptop or similar device powered by a Li-ion battery and suddenly get a smell that’s fruity or like nail polish, congratulations you likely have a swollen battery (or, as the internet likes to call them, spicy pillows) on your hands.

Stop using the device and replace the battery immediately, safely disposing of the old one while NEVER applying pressure to it.

The smell of sulfur inside your home.

Indication of a gas leak.

Dense_Tonight9891:
That rotten egg / sulfur smell. Once you know it’s the added odor for gas leaks, you never forget it, and it’s one of those things you should immediately take seriously.

RosemarieAllan:

Rotten eggs, sulfur, or sometimes a skunk-like odor usually mean there's a gas leak.

C-Diff infection.

dum_spir0_sper0:

I’ve spent years working in an ER and am very familiar with the smell, it truly is quite hard to describe but I’ll try…
It’s a sharp, fetid, organic smell. It definitely smells like feces, but sour ‘unhealthy’ feces with a bit of that sickly sweet infection smell around the edges. I’ve gotten used to the smell of blood, viscera, UTIs, and almost anything else the body can produce… but this is one of those smells that punches you right in the face. Like digested blood. That’s another one you’ll never get used to.

Ozone.

I smelled it in my backyard once, then heard a hiss and then KABOOOOOM!!!! Lightning struck an apple tree that was about ten meters from me.

The whole event took fractions of a second but my brain picked out each step like that.

In fact, I think the hiss came first, then the smell of burning air and then the blinding white light and then the soul-splitting cracking sound.

Lightning sounds totally different up close like that. It was terrifying jfc.

Jharic_:

Nothing smells like ozone. It's so metallic. You can taste it and it changes the smell of everything around you. Had the same thing happen when a lightning bolt struck a tenants car 15 feet from my studio window. Our window was open because it was summer and the cool rain and breezy wind made us feel nicer. Just like you said CRACKLE BAM! metal

Whenever my car smells weirdly sweet like syrup while I’m driving, I’m pulling over because that coolant leak can turn bad fast.

tumblrout:

Aircon condenser leak smells like durian.

Bedbugs smell bitter/acrid. If you walk into a hotel room, someone’s house, or near the back row of a movie theater and the air is weirdly acrid, don’t sit down! Just head on out and save yourself lol. Source: I am an entomologist and one of my college professors kept a little bedbug colony for students and local pest control professionals to sniff, so we could commit the smell to memory.

This one is very niche and I hope nobody ever has to use it but I learned it from the Marines. If you're ever in a combat zone and smell cinnamon, it means someone nearby is making IEDs. They cover it with cinnamon to throw off dogs.

If it smells like cut grass and nobody has been cutting grass nearby, it's phosgene gas.

If a pill smells like almonds, it's cyanide.

EDIT: Just wanted to take advantage of the high upvotes to put this out there: Phosgene gas can be released when a welding arc makes contact with certain cleaning agents, notably brake cleaners. People have [[passed] because of this. Anyone who welds should make sure to know what cleaning agents they are using and what happens when those cleaning agents make contact with a welding arc. As others have pointed out, by the time you smell phosgene gas, it's probably already too late.

A STRONG smell of chlorine or a sharp, chemical odor near an ice rink, not caused by swimming pool chemicals, but rather by byproducts from the Zamboni or, more seriously, an AMMONIA LEAK from the refrigeration system.

I was at a golf driving range, later in the evening, downhill of an ice rink, you could see a white cloud rolling down the hill like fog just feel the oxygen being sucked out off the air. FIND HIGHER GROUND IMMEDIATELY as there is an extremely high likelihood of asphyxiation risk. There was a severe leak in the equipment and fire fighters said it’s a good thing we acted quickly.

I started to smell like canned pears just before diabetes diagnosis.

If you smell chlorine, particularly indoors, and you are no where near a pool, someone accidentally mixed household cleaners (commonly bleach and drain-o) and they just created chlorine gas. Get outside and call the fire department.

Decomposing human tissue. I was a paramedic for a decade and a half and have stumbled upon several bodies over the years that had been down for a while. It has a very distinct smell, especially as time goes on. I cant describe it but i can still taste and smell it if i think about it.

All my vet techs and shelter workers know, you can walk into a quarantine room and immediately know which animal has giardia before the samples even get to the lab 🤢.

TheOGPotatoPredator:

I haven’t been a vet tech for almost 25 years and I still can remember what it smelled like when we had a poor doggo with parvo.

VetTech_FarmMom:

Parvo..if I could let people smell parvo I swear they’d get their damn shots..the metallic/iron/intestine lining smell is never forgotten

I live in Alaska. In deep brush, you will smell the bear before you see it, if you're lucky. And even if you've never even been in the woods before, you will instinctively know what that smell is. We're hard-wired to respond to that smell.

Smells foul. What I'm talking about is usually in the spring, right after they come out of the den. Urine and feces mixed with really bad breath and rotten meat are as close to what it is as I can get. They lose most of that smell after shedding their winter coat.
But even a bear in the fall will have a distinct odor. You'll just know, trust me.

I work on a petrochemical plant. Sweet, rotten fruit, leak at Solvents plant. Rotten eggs, leak at Sulphur plant. Bitter ozone, leak at Oxygen plant. Sweet plasticy smell, leak at Phenosolvents plant. It sounds like the plant is falling apart from this explanation, but I've lived in the town adjacent all my life and worked inside the plant for well over a decade.

Rotting fish if you’re out hiking.

Bears, but grizzly bears in particular, smell *very* strongly of rotting fish, especially in the fall when they’re eating nothing BUT fish.

Bears also tend to be more aggressive during this time, because it’s both mating season and heavy feeding time. They get a sudden boost of eating energy to eat as much fatty foods as they can lay their paws on before hibernation, and they get kinda cranky.

I’ll share one from personal experience. I have Crohn’s disease and one of the first symptoms I get of a flare stating was that my gas smelled like absolute [demise]. It seemed random at first, but over time it’s pretty clear that it’s the smell of inflammation causing serious damage and thus an incoming massive increase in symptoms.

…this is not particularly relevant to most people though. Still, it might be worth considering if your farts randomly start smelling really bad that it’s almost definitely either a major change in your gut microbiome or damage being done to your intestines so you should potentially get it checked out, at least if it isn’t a one time thing.

Drakkar Noir, you’re gonna want to keep a close eye on your drink.