Why do farts smell bad?
Why do farts smell bad?
by jay ingram
XPERIMENTS TO EVALUATE FARTS aren’t all that easy to perform. It doesn’t take much to persuade volunteers to be farters, but it takes a lot to persuade them to be smellers. The few experiments that have been run, though, have all found the same thing: where there’s stink, there’s sulfur.In one infamous experiment, ten men and six women were put to work eating pinto beans and lactulose (a synthetic sugar usually used to treat constipation). The volunteers were then instructed to fart into a number of test tubes and then quickly seal them up to trap the gas. The researchers analyzed the gas to see if it contained any sulfur compounds. They weren’t surprised when they found a cocktail of sulfurous chemicals. Then came the hard part. The scientists gave the tubes to a group of judges and asked them to rank the intensity of the smell in each one. When the researchers compared the judges’ results with their chemical analysis, they found that the gases that ranked highest on the judges’ intensity scale also had the highest sulfur content.Science Fiction! The idea that men fart more than women might sound correct, but there’s no truth to the claim. In fact, most people release about 1 quart (1 liter) of farts each day, and on average, women’s flatulence contains higher concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, the smelliest chemical in farts. Most people would have stopped the research at this point. But the scientists weren’t happy with just establishing that sulfur was the leading ingredient in the stink. They went one step further: they decided to test different materials to try to find one that would capture and hold on to the chemicals in the fart odor. This had to be a much more tightly controlled experiment than the one with the tubes of farts. The researchers outfitted volunteers in pants specially designed with a lining made of either activated charcoal or zinc acetate (a salt that’s often found in cold medications). In this experiment, the volunteers didn’t have to produce their own farts—there’s too much variation from person to person. Instead the scientists concocted their own uniform fart-like mix of gases and pumped it into the airspace near the anus of each volunteer. A short time later the scientists recaptured the gas and compared it to the original concoction to see how much of the sulfur—and thus the stink—had been captured by the special pants. The charcoal pants performed the best, removing almost all the gas and odor. The salt pants removed most of the gas, but didn’t successfully eliminate the stench.
Did You Know . . . Although farts stink, your breath is much worse.Somewhere between one hundred and two hundred chemicals conspire to make your breath smell bad. Within that mix, the most potent ones contain—you guessed it—sulfur. The amount of work that went into researching these specially designed pants might seem over the top, but it’s useful if you imagine a close-quarters cross-country airplane trip. Flatulence can be particularly difficult in an airplane. Any gas that’s inside you at takeoff will increase in volume by about a third by the time you reach cruising altitude. That thought should persuade you to release any gas you have before you take off (and preferably before you board the plane), but if you miss that opportunity, medical professionals agree it’s far better to let it rip than to hold in gas during a flight. Letting loose like that might make you more comfortable, but it can lead to nightmares for your seat neighbors. After all, when all that sulfur comes out, there’s nowhere it can really go in an airplane. Some airlines already use activated charcoal in their air conditioning to keep the cabin air fresh, while others have looked at installing charcoal-infused cushions to absorb the smell. The problem with the cushions is that, if a person is wearing pants or a skirt made of leather or some other material that won’t let the fart pass through it (it’s called “low fart permeability”), then their clothes could create a tunnel effect. The fart might be channeled down the pant leg and out into the open air, completely bypassing the charcoal-lined cushion. Researchers also point out that business-class leather seats wouldn’t permit gases to seep into the charcoal cushion either. It seems, then, that for frequent fliers, a pair of charcoal-lined underwear might allow them to sneak a fart while still keeping their fellow passengers happy. Of course, that strategy would be completely undermined if they forgot to wear underwear at all.
by jay ingram
XPERIMENTS TO EVALUATE FARTS aren’t all that easy to perform. It doesn’t take much to persuade volunteers to be farters, but it takes a lot to persuade them to be smellers. The few experiments that have been run, though, have all found the same thing: where there’s stink, there’s sulfur.In one infamous experiment, ten men and six women were put to work eating pinto beans and lactulose (a synthetic sugar usually used to treat constipation). The volunteers were then instructed to fart into a number of test tubes and then quickly seal them up to trap the gas. The researchers analyzed the gas to see if it contained any sulfur compounds. They weren’t surprised when they found a cocktail of sulfurous chemicals. Then came the hard part. The scientists gave the tubes to a group of judges and asked them to rank the intensity of the smell in each one. When the researchers compared the judges’ results with their chemical analysis, they found that the gases that ranked highest on the judges’ intensity scale also had the highest sulfur content.Science Fiction! The idea that men fart more than women might sound correct, but there’s no truth to the claim. In fact, most people release about 1 quart (1 liter) of farts each day, and on average, women’s flatulence contains higher concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, the smelliest chemical in farts. Most people would have stopped the research at this point. But the scientists weren’t happy with just establishing that sulfur was the leading ingredient in the stink. They went one step further: they decided to test different materials to try to find one that would capture and hold on to the chemicals in the fart odor. This had to be a much more tightly controlled experiment than the one with the tubes of farts. The researchers outfitted volunteers in pants specially designed with a lining made of either activated charcoal or zinc acetate (a salt that’s often found in cold medications). In this experiment, the volunteers didn’t have to produce their own farts—there’s too much variation from person to person. Instead the scientists concocted their own uniform fart-like mix of gases and pumped it into the airspace near the anus of each volunteer. A short time later the scientists recaptured the gas and compared it to the original concoction to see how much of the sulfur—and thus the stink—had been captured by the special pants. The charcoal pants performed the best, removing almost all the gas and odor. The salt pants removed most of the gas, but didn’t successfully eliminate the stench.
Did You Know . . . Although farts stink, your breath is much worse.Somewhere between one hundred and two hundred chemicals conspire to make your breath smell bad. Within that mix, the most potent ones contain—you guessed it—sulfur. The amount of work that went into researching these specially designed pants might seem over the top, but it’s useful if you imagine a close-quarters cross-country airplane trip. Flatulence can be particularly difficult in an airplane. Any gas that’s inside you at takeoff will increase in volume by about a third by the time you reach cruising altitude. That thought should persuade you to release any gas you have before you take off (and preferably before you board the plane), but if you miss that opportunity, medical professionals agree it’s far better to let it rip than to hold in gas during a flight. Letting loose like that might make you more comfortable, but it can lead to nightmares for your seat neighbors. After all, when all that sulfur comes out, there’s nowhere it can really go in an airplane. Some airlines already use activated charcoal in their air conditioning to keep the cabin air fresh, while others have looked at installing charcoal-infused cushions to absorb the smell. The problem with the cushions is that, if a person is wearing pants or a skirt made of leather or some other material that won’t let the fart pass through it (it’s called “low fart permeability”), then their clothes could create a tunnel effect. The fart might be channeled down the pant leg and out into the open air, completely bypassing the charcoal-lined cushion. Researchers also point out that business-class leather seats wouldn’t permit gases to seep into the charcoal cushion either. It seems, then, that for frequent fliers, a pair of charcoal-lined underwear might allow them to sneak a fart while still keeping their fellow passengers happy. Of course, that strategy would be completely undermined if they forgot to wear underwear at all.
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