The Straight Dope: How do “odor eliminators” work?

[View this message as a web page] [The Straight Dope] 12/09/2016 Dear Cecil: What’s the deal with the new crop of bathroom odor-reducing sprays that have come out over the past ten years or so? How do they neutralize the nastiest bathroom stench and replace it with a delightful scent almost immediately? — Karl Schoettler Cecil replies: Forget a better mousetrap. You really want the world to beat a path to your door? Find a way to make farts smell like lilacs and strawberries. The air-freshener people have been doing their best for decades now, of course: teaching us to feel shame about smells intrinsic to ordinary human existence and peddling a succession of new and improved products designed to obscure them. And the products often are new; we can agree on that. But — your own experience notwithstanding, Karl — it's a lot trickier to demonstrate that they’re improved. For more, see: [ STRAIGHT DOPE STAFF REPORT — 10/02/2000 Dear Straight Dope: Hey, what I can't figure out is carbon dating. They can carbon date the Shroud of Turin, and realize it wasn't made 2,000 years ago, right? Well, before it was shroud, it was, like, wool or something, and before it was wool or somethnig, it was hairs on a sheep's back, right? Blah, blah, blah (you can see where I'm going with this). So at what point does something's carbon b-day start? Am I missing the point entirely here? I need your help, man. — Randy SDStaff Ken replies: The broad principles behind carbon dating are fairly simple to explain. Look at your standard periodic table. Carbon is element 6, with an atomic mass of 12. Sunlight (cosmic radiation) strikes the upper atmosphere and converts a small amount of nitrogen (element 7, atomic mass of 14) into the unstable radioactive iostope carbon-14. The C-14 then gets bound into carbon dioxide gas molecules in the atmosphere, and thus absorbed into plant life. The plants are consumed by animals, and thus C-14 appears in all living creatures on Earth. For more, see: [ STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC — 01/09/2004 Dear Cecil: Am I a moron for believing that "mole people" exist in New York City's underground? The mole people, as documented in an eponymous 1993 book by Jennifer Toth, are homeless people who live in subway tunnels, sucking down electricity and other resources for free a la Ellison's Invisible Man. Is Toth lying? Hallucinating? What documentation is there? — Gina G., via the Internet Cecil replies: Can't blame you for being skeptical. Parts of Toth's book read like something out of Dickens. I didn't venture into the tunnels myself, but I did speak to Toth, who was a Los Angeles Times intern when she wrote the book. I also corroborated some of her facts with other sources. While one can be certain of nothing in this deceitful world, I'm reasonably satisfied that the events in her book, God help us, happened as she described them. For more, see: [ YOUR AD HERE! Your direct line to thousands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet, plus a few total dipsticks. For rates and details contact Rich at [rhummel@suntimes.com]. Copyright © 2016 Sun-Times Media, LLC. This email was sent by The Straight Dope, Sun-Times Media, LLC., 350 N. Orleans, 10th Floor, Chicago, IL 60654 [Unsubscribe/update preferences] This email was sent to {EMAIL}. To change or update your newsletter subscription preferences, or to unsubscribe from all Chicago Reader and Straight Dope newsletters and promotional communications, [click here]. Please allow 72 hours for this change to take effect.