How Do Researchers Preserve Smells?

Scents affect how we experience different culures and places, and researchers believe they have historical value. So, how are we preserving them?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
it's Christian Seger. Pardon me, fragrances your book wearing researchers
at University College London suggests that the nose knows get it.
In an extensive study of smells, heritage and historic paper
published in the journal Heritage Science, the authors argue the

(00:25):
importance of documenting and preserving smells, but why. The researchers
realize that visitors at St. Paul's Cathedral, Dean and Chapter
Library in London frequently comment on the aroma of the space,
saying they feel like they can smell history now thanks
to our limbic system. Odors can make us pretty emotional,

(00:47):
especially when they evoke memories. Sense affect how we experience
different cultures and places, and help us gain more insight
into and engage more deeply with the past. Since smells
are a part of our cultural heritage, the researchers pose
it they have historical value and deserve to be identified, analyzed,

(01:08):
and archived using chemical analysis and sensory descriptions. The study
authors set about figuring out a way for scientists and
historians to do so. In one experiment, the researchers asked
visitors at the historic library to characterize the odors they smelled.
More than seventy percent of respondents considered the library smell

(01:30):
as pleasant. All the visitors thought it smelled woody, while
eighty six percent noticed a smokey aroma. Earthy was seventy
one percent, and vanilla at fort were also descriptors visitors
chose often. Other responses ranged from musty to pungent and
floral to rancid mmm. In another experiment, the study authors

(01:54):
analyzed the responses of seventy nine visitors to the Birmingham
Museum and Art Gallery in the United Kingdom to the
smell of a historic book from a second hand bookstore.
To capture the book smell, a piece of sterile gauze
was soaked in five milli leaders or point one seven
ounces of an extract of the book odor and placed

(02:16):
in an unlabeled metal canister scrowge shut to prevent visitors
from peaking. The top three responses when the visitors were
prompted to describe the smell chocolate, coffee, and old. The
team even analyzed the volatile organic compounds also known as
v o c s in the book and in the library.

(02:38):
Most odors are composed of v o C s, or
chemicals that evaporate at low temperatures. V o C s
are often associated with certain smell types, like ascetic acid
with sour, for instance. Using the data from the chemical
analysis and visitors smell descriptions, the researchers created the Historic
Book Odor Wheel to document an archive the Historic Library

(03:04):
smell main categories such as sweet or spicy fill the
inner circle of the wheel. Descriptors such as caramel or
biscuits fill the middle, and the chemical compounds likely to
be the smelly source, like for for all, fill the
outer circle. The researchers want the Book Odor Wheel to
be an interdisciplinary tool that untrained noses can use to

(03:27):
identify smells and the compounds causing them, which could address
conservators concerns about material composition and degradation, inform artifact paper
conservation decisions, and benefit Ola Factory museum experiences. Today's episode

(03:50):
was written by Shelley Danzy, produced by Dylan Fagan, and
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