We DO Need Stinkin’ Badges

How important IS that least-appreciated of all senses, the sense of smell?

Just ask Officer David Agostino, whose suspension as a Pittsburgh police officer due to his anosmia (reduced sense of smell) was today supported by a Harrisburg appeals court.

“The evidence sufficiently demonstrated that Agostino suffered a physical disability that rendered him unfit to serve as a police officer,” Judge Bernard L. McGinley wrote. “Critically, Agostino frequently patrolled alone and served as a first responder in instances that required a sense of smell to ensure his safety and the safety of others.”

Agostino, who joined the force in 1998, was seriously injured in August of 2004 in an off-duty motorcycle accident which caused severe head injury–a common cause of anosmia. According to the three-judge Commonwealth Court appeals panel, his termination was justified because officers must be able to detect drugs, alcohol, hazardous materials, natural gas and other substances.

Agostino insisted he was capable of performing police duties. He argued that a sense of smell is neither an essential function nor tested by the Pennsylvania Municipal Police Officers’ Education and Training Commission.

The township said Agostino’s inability to smell impeded his performance. A fellow officer testified that Agostino was unable to smell the alcohol and marijuana odor around a motorist who had led police on a high-speed chase. Collier Township Police Chief Thomas D. Devin reported that Agostino’s condition became a problem during a call in which the officer helped an elderly resident restart a furnace and could have potentially resulted in an explosion.

Pennsylvania State Police Maj. John Gallaher, executive director of the state municipal officers’ training commission, said physicians who examine recruits are supposed to issue an opinion about fitness for duty. There are standards for vision, hearing and cardiovascular health, but not for smell.

There are many reasons a police officer would need to be able to smell, said Edward Mamet, a retired New York City Police captain who is a consultant on police practices. He said he once sniffed out a major gas leak, as well as the telltale yeast from an illegal still.

“Where it’s dark, sometimes your sense of smell can help you, guide your way,” he said. “There’s the smell of death when a body turns what we call ripe after being dead for a few days. It’s a horrible smell.”

Collier Township solicitor Chuck Means said lawyers involved in the case could not find a legal precedent that directly addressed Agostino’s situation. Larger departments, he noted, could assign someone who can’t smell to duties in which safety would not be an issue. “In Collier Township the police officers are all out in the field and they’re first responders.”

Agostino’s lawyer, Ronald Koerner, said he was unsure whether he would pursue raising a stink over the officer’s dismissal. “I’m disappointed, but we’ll have to see what we’re going to do.”

Olfactory Fact #42: Astronauts Don’t Smell So Well

The zero-gravity of space causes the sinuses of astronauts to fill with fluid, greatly diminishing their sense of smell. NASA deemed this “odor boredom” so detrimental to efficiency that they now pipe a variety of scents into the air conditioning system of the space shuttle.

This Little Stinker takes the Prize!

It wasn’t all sweet-smelling maple syrup in Vermont, this week, where the city of Montpelier hosted the 34th Annual National Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest on Tuesday. Seven regional finalists aged between 7 and 15 paraded their most offensive footwear for a panel of judges that included a NASA chemical specialist and a Brown University professor.

And who won the dubious honor of officially owning the Stinkiest Sneakers on Earth? Seven-year-old Joshua Boothe of Utah, who walked off with a golden trophy, an all-expense-paid trip to New York, a check for $2500.00…and, oh yes: A one-year supply of Odor-Eaters.

As for Joshua’s prize-winning odiferous runners? They will be enshrined with past winners in Montpelier’s “Odor-Eater Hall of Fumes.”

Prolitec is “Adding Sense” to Adergy

Congratulations from the Whiff-Guys to our friends at Prolitec on being selected by Adergy, a value-added reseller of Trusonic digital audio messaging and music services to food retailers, as its technology solution provider for scent marketing and odor remediation services to the supermarket and convenience store industries.

Under the agreement, the Florida-based Adergy will market Prolitec’s services to the 26 chains it currently serves in 34 states, as well as new accounts in the supermarket and convenience store sectors. This will augment the company’s current programs that utilize Trusonic Internet transmission technology to provide retail food clients with in-store music, customized location-specific messaging, and national and local advertising.

Milwaukee-based Prolitec’s technologies will be introduced to the supermarket and convenience store sectors through Adergy’s newly formed Adding Sense Division. The relationship may also open new opportunities for Prolitec with certain non-food retailers, adding to its existing scented marketing retail programs.

“After careful consideration of the Prolitec technology advantage over all competing providers in the marketplace, we decided to partner with Prolitec to offer the best sensory marketing solution and the best value to our clients,” said Adergy President John Greenfield. “For those retailers aware of the tremendous power scent brings to strategic brand building, Prolitec’s services provide a key marketing tool in the most competitive retailing environment in decades. With Prolitec’s flexible technologies, scent can be strategically utilized to enhance the appeal of the overall store, key departments or specific products. The opportunities are numerous.”

The Adding Sense Division will also market Prolitec’s odor remediation technologies, with potential applications in the supermarket and c-store sectors including restrooms and trash storage areas.

“We are pleased to be partnering with Adergy to pursue new growth opportunities for our technologies in the fertile supermarket and c-store sectors,” said Roger Bensinger, Executive VP of Marketing at Prolitec. “With this new capability, Adergy effectively becomes the one-stop source for food retailers for digital music and messaging, scented marketing and odor remediation. We see great synergies here.”

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Endorphin Branding™ the Arts

A new interactive exhibit opening next Sunday at California’s Oceanside Museum of Art will not only explore the fascinating connection between scent and memory known as scent branding or endorphin branding™, it will put the phenomenon into practice with the introduction of OMA, a fragrance which visitors can take home to relive their museum experience.

“The olfactory senses operate out of the oldest part of the brain,” says conceptual artist Brian Goeltzenleuchter, who developed the scent as part of his installation, Institutional Wellbeing: An Olfactory Plan for Oceanside Museum of Art . “Smell is the most memory-evoking of all our senses. We branded this with the museum so that when you smell it, it will remind you of the museum.”

The exhibit, which runs through August 9, will include a scent-based meditation room with smelling stations, a gallery showcasing photographic documents of the “Institutional Wellbeing” process, an educational station featuring interactive smelling stations, web and video works, and a reading room with literature about the project.

Goeltzenleuchter consulted with the museum staff, board members and patrons to develop the fragrance, which will be part of the exhibit and will sell in the museum store for about $20. “The top note is a sweet, green smell that immediately transitions into a warm, atmospheric tone underneath with hints of tobacco and tea,” he said. “It will bring you into a peaceful place that you will find here – introspective, a nice state of being.”

“We had to answer a questionnaire and smell a test sample, then he would push on our arm to see how we physically reacted to the scent,” says assistant museum director Danielle Susalla, who participated in the project. “He’s questioning with his conceptual work what art is and making you wonder if the new fragrance is art or a commodity.”

Sniffing Out the Truth?

Countless research has concluded that volatile organic compounds present in human sweat are altered by what’s happening inside that person’s head at any given moment. Both human subjects and such scientific techniques as gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry have proven capable of sniffing out the smell of fear as opposed to, say, the smell of sexual arousal. One study even concluded that body odor differs according to whether a person is feeling happy or sad. So, what about the smell of deception?

In a federal procurement document released last week by the Department of Homeland Security, its Science and Technology Directorate announced plans to conduct an “outsourced, proof-of-principle study to determine if human odor signatures can serve as an indicator of deception.” According to the notice, the department is already “conducting experiments in deceptive behavior and collecting human odor samples.” The research it now hopes to fund “will consist primarily of the analysis and study of the human odor samples collected to determine if a deception indicator can be found.”

This “proof of concept” research, which could potentially enhance the ability to detect an individual harboring harmful intent, is in its earliest stages of technological development, according to DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa. “A positive result from this proof-of-principle study would provide evidence that human odor is a useful indicator for certain human behaviors and, in addition, that it may be used as a biometric identifier.”

It’s a development which has already drawn sharp criticism from such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union. “The history of DHS´ deployment of these technologies has been one colossal failure after another,” says Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project, who believes that the plan shows evidence of misplaced priorities on the part of the DHS. “There is no lie detector. This research has been a long, meandering journey which has taken us down one blind alley after another.”

The proposed research would be conducted by the Federally Funded Research and Development Center run by the nonprofit Mitre Corporation, which conducts cutting-edge research for the U.S. military, Homeland Security and intelligence agencies.

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Korea’s Electronic Nose has a Human Touch

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