The scientists who sniff water

Abstract

Mel Suffet stood at a whiteboard, dry-erase marker in hand, and asked me sarcastically, “Did you have fish for dinner?” He wasn’t commenting on my breath. For the past hour, I’d been sitting in a mini-cubicle, taking part in a six-person odor-sniffing panel in his lab at the University of California, Los Angeles. I’d just told him that a water sample I’d sniffed had a musty and fishy odor. “I’m not going to put it down because it’s wrong,” he said. “We don’t have a fishy odor.” He paused from recording the other panelists’ descriptions, went to a fume hood, and pulled out the Erlenmeyer flask containing the sample in question. He told me to smell it again. After a few sniffs, I realized he was right: It was musty and pine scented. Clearly, smelling water is challenging. The exercise was an example of how water scientists analyze funky-smelling water.