What chemicals smells like something rotten or dead but are non-toxic to inhale?

Question

I have looked at Putrescine, Cadaverine, and Spermidine but I think those are toxic. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Butyric acid is present in vomit and is basically what creates the characteristic vomit smell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid
According to the MSDS data, it is toxic if smallowed but it is not harmful to smell it but the smell may induce nausea:
http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/BU/butyric_acid.html

Also, usually compounds with a thiol group (called thiols) are characterized by having unpleasant smells.
Here is a list of thiols:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thiols

Just in case you don't know if you want to find out the safety info for something just type in MSDS after it into a search engine.

Answer 2

Basically for almost all of the compounds mentioned above you can smell them at concentrations far below concentrations where they're toxic. Everything is toxic at some concentration: people have died from drinking too much water!

Putrescine, cadaverine, and most of the other long aliphatic amines smell to high-heaven, and will stick around forever. The only way to get rid of the smell is with bleach. Similarly, any thiol will be very hard to remove without bleach (bleach oxidizes the amines and the thiols and makes them non-volatile). Short amines correspond to fish smells, thiols to rotten eggs, butyric acid to rancid butter, and longer amines to rotting flesh. Ammonium sulfide smells really really terrible by combining the wonderfulness of amines and thiols.

Please remember, use these in REALLY small amounts, have bleach handy to wash any surface (including your fingers!) that may get these on them, and almost no amount of water/soap will get rid of the smell completely. Also, your nose will get accustomed to the smell within minutes (as will anyone else's), but that means that you won't know if you smell really badly, but I guarantee you everyone else will!

Answer 3

Sulfur smells pretty bad, like rotting eggs, and isn't toxic. Wondering why you want to know....

Answer 4

Hydrogen sulphide (rotten egg gas) in very small doses wont be very harmful - but overexposure can be very damaging.

Answer 5

hey rotten egg generates H2S which is not harmful to inhale i think, but in excess it could be.
or else Chlorine gas itself is pungent in smell,, excess could be dangerous!!!

Answer 6

I thinks it formaldehyde.....or something like that.