UKC

For the last 2 days I have had the pleasure of working on a meat rendering factory (glue factory)

Have just popped in my van and even though the windows and doors have been closed all day, it stinks after 6 hours away from site (only the second day on site). Cloths in washing machine, shower and scrub hands. (can still smell it on my hands though, only 3 more days to go, I hope)

If anyone drove up the M6/M72 in the borders during foot and mouth and smelt the burning carcasses; it comes close, but the smell is a lot stronger, concentrated + bits of animals and blood and fat is kicking about everywhere.

I walked into the boiler house the first day, held my breath for as long as I could while the engineer showed me around, took 1 breath and heaved, the boilers run on animal fat (lard pumped into them)

Burning animal parts have always been at the top of my worst smell list, loads worse than burning hair, septic tanks, pig farming or even a bag of maggots when fishing!

What is the worst smell in your opinion?

In reply to Alphin: mine was at corran park pumping station,west of scotland water,oban.its a sewage treatment unit and i did the gas detection system there.spent 3 days on there and by the end of the second i couldnt smell at all which was good



rich

In reply to Alphin: hold on, if you hate the smell, why you working there?!?!?

oh and my worst smell.....frying mushrooms or liver!

Jess.x

In reply to Alphin:

gangrene on your own body

In reply to Alphin:

There used to be a rendering works in Kendal called Cumsties - you could smell it all over town.

Among my worst smells are:

Marmite (smells worse than dog muck)
McDonald's happy crappy meals (closer to vomit)
Rotten turnips (a bit of frost does them)

boB

In reply to Little Brew:

I'm a contractor, spend the duration of the job at that site, then move on to another.

No choice + no prior information, just the address, not what they actually do.

Bugger, I can still smell it on my hands

In reply to Alphin:

Cleaning out a 6 inch deep shitfloor in a chicken coop after it's been left for a few weeks in hot weather to cook down and form a crust. You break the surface and watch the odour rise like smoke. If you have sense you run and get a gas mask. It's kind of like pure ammonia mixed with old shit and death.

In reply to Bob:

I think a lot have closed.
I have worked near this site before, and have wondered where the smell came from. Had thought it may have been the river - The Mersey



Potatoes (rotten, for me comes in 3rd)

2nd would be a still born piglet, which has been fished out after a few weeks after the event.

In reply to Alphin: Is that the place that stinks of a weird sickly sweet smell near the M62 close to Warrington - near the junction with the large sculpture? If not that is the worst smell I know of.

In reply to Steve Parker:

Ah yes the ammonia of chicken poo, my first year of work involved 40,000 of the little soles.

When the augers were turnrd on while mucking out, was very bad, makes top 5, but not top 3!

Any maggot eaten carcus I'd say is top 5 as well, if you have to move it anyway!

In reply to Alphin:

The 'Job' cigarette paper factory somewhere in the Pyrenees is bad too

In reply to Alphin:

I'd put the chicken shit higher than the maggoty carcass, and I've had lots of dealings with both. Although a whole dead sheep, with a stomach full of 2 week old gas, can almost knock you out when you shift it and the gut ruptures! That's gotta be top 3.

In reply to Alphin:

the village I grew up in had a maggot farm, which minged (mung?) to high heaven in summer

In reply to Steve Parker:

1 Meat rendering plant/glue factory
2 Foot and mouth burning carcasses
3 Most animal/human poo, which has stood still for a bit, then moved for whatever reason, esp chicken poo + septic tanks
4

In reply to Alphin:

Sticking your head in a dead cow's stomach.

Me after a bad curry and a load of beer.

In reply to Alphin:

Actually, I suspect we're just amateurs here. I doubt there was much worse than mustard gas creeping into your trench in 1916.

In reply to Steve Parker:

My children discribe my farts as smelling of dead badgers, theirs obviously smell of roses as they are girls

Reason for the dead badger is there was a dead one outside the campsite we stayed at 2 years ago, over the 2 weeks it went off. I think it is close to the worst thing they have ever smelt - hense my trumps

In reply to Steve Parker: mustard doesnt smell bad?

In reply to Steve Parker:

Was the first wiff enough to kill?

I do work with some nice chemicals every now and then. If you smell them you are in trouble, if you don't smell it after that the concentration is too high and you are dead.

Some chemicals you do not even get the chane to smell (as they don't have an odure), but the outcome can be fatal.

In reply to Ste Brom:

Get some mustard oil and boil it, then stick your nose in and breathe deeply. If you are not crying for the next half hour you're a robot!

In reply to Alphin:

I agree with meat rendering - there was a plant on the outskirts of Lancaster thatused to stink out the whole town.

I also agree with rotting potatoes. Something to do with the sickly sweet ammonia (used to work in a grocers).

Fish markets at the end of a hot day also turn my stomach.

In reply to Alphin:

Yeah, my son smells like a dead badger from time to time. Guess he takes after the old man

In reply to Alphin:
No, lots of people survived, but they had a pretty bad time. Before they had gasmasks they used to piss on scarves and wrap them round their faces when they saw the gas coming. Well, you would, wouldn't you!

In reply to Alphin:

On a beach on the west coast of Ireland on a geology survey we had to cross a metre deep five metre wide band of rotting seaweed. We thought it looked solid enough to stand till we sunk in. We all nearly threw up when the smell hit us.

In reply to Alphin:
Raw lanolin when being washed from a sheeps fleece. A woolcomber in Bradford gives off a pong that sends people running for cover

I pass a maggot farm (the largest commercial producer in Europe) on my way to work every morning, most mornings I manage to remember to switch the air conditioning to recirculate, but there's always that odd morning...

In reply to Chrispy: I used to do this Fell race, I think it was called The Three Towers, and up near Holcombe Tower was a maggot farm, getting past this without throwing up was the crux of the race :-0.
Also I was once in the National Cross Country Championship at Roundhay park in Leeds, and just at the top of the only tough hill on the course was a hot dog/burger stand, having to breathe in really deeply with this cloying smell brought back memories of the maggot farm.

In reply to Al Evans: Having to unlock gate in Western Aus in35 degrees with dead kangaroo hanging off it which was alive with maggots - nice I think the boss knew it was there so sent me.

In reply to Alphin:

the worst i have come across in a long time was a french guy at works lunch.

I think it was a fish once. Left to die under a rock, then after having fermented for a while(think months) it was put in an old rockboot then heated in that.

In reply to gizmo:

Just think that one of the reasons that there aren't so many rendering plants around now making bone meal is that they have discovered how to extract the stuff for use in human food. Mechanically Recovered Meat anyone?

boB

In reply to Alphin:
A climbing partner had a pair of 5.10 Newtons that he climbed in on a sweaty humid day and then left in a plastic bag for a year.

Then we went on a six month road trip across the US and the brought them along.

We were doing "Prince of Darkness" in Red Rocks, six pitches of crimpy face climbing, and when I was on second I could tell when I was four metres from the belay, without looking up.

The cheese smell was awful. In his defence however, anyone who has ever had a pair of those shoes has complained that they are the stinkiest model ever.

In reply to Alphin:

That brings back memories of treating the rainwater, blood, bits of flesh etc from the burn sites. Tankers running up and down the country without tachographs and with bits of dead cow stuck to the wheels, I'm sure that really helped with controlling the epidemic. We had a 'Build a cow' contest using the bits we fished out of the screens when the tankers offloaded.
Happy days

In reply to Alphin:
No we had to live in the F and M smoke and particles for weeks - 2 fires only a mile away each - the smoke and taste was in the house all the time, even with all doors and windows shut


to be honest fresh child vomit all over a car miles from home is my worst nightmare

You could still smell the fires from the Penrith area in Grasmere,not just the M6 - just over the road from here the carcasses of a whole farm lay visible from the roadside for 10 days before collection. Terrible seeing the new lambs and cows in the morning and field empty by afternoon. They stank after a day or 2

In reply to Steve Parker:

Actually, I suspect we're just amateurs here. I doubt there was much worse than mustard gas creeping into your trench in 1916.


I'm sure you're right - I remember visiting a great uncle in the summer holidays every year as a youngster who had been gassed. Always coughing.


re vomit - I guess the command module of an Apollo would have been a bad place to be plastering all over

In reply to Alphin:

Gun shot wound to the gut. Large amounts of blood flow into the intestinal tract, where it gets partially digested. When the victim eventually dies on the operating table, a by prodcut of death is the evacuation of bowls and bladder. The worst smell in the world, apparently, is large amounts of partially digeseted blood poop. Enjoy your breakfast

In reply to Alphin:
Beta-mercaptoethanol is a good one, smells like fish multiplied by a thousand

In reply to Alphin: The smell of horses being re-shod is pretty rank. A friend of mine's dad is a farrier and said it takes ages to get conditioned to. Blurghk

In reply to Alphin:
So you don't like barbecues then?

In reply to CJD:

mang

In reply to Alphin: I had lunch yesterday with potential clients. They are making a tray for bedding plants that is made from corn!! and therefore is compostable. The two people I met had just visited a Grundon industrial composting plant and the smell had really stayed with them. . .

It is not such a terrible smell on its own, but in the surroundings of a restaurant with attendant food smells, it fair turned me up.

Bill was cheap though. . .

In reply to Anonymous:


Happened to the g/f 3-4 weeks ago. Not even her child, just doing someone a favour. The parents paid for a valet on the car, but when we had that scorching day down here, it started to hum again. Will it ever disappear?

In reply to PK:

yes, gradually bacteria etc will break it down - takes a while though

In reply to Alphin:

Melina.

A mixture of excrement and rotting dead blood.... comes out of very very ill people's bottoms and is singularly the most rank experience on earth.
I do sympathise with you though. I spent a day at a bone meal factory some years ago and it was incredible. The smell was awful not to mention everything being sticky to the touch and the floor being so slippery with guts and slime it was all I could do not to fall over in it. Dreadful places.

In reply to adamtc:

Strangely Mrs Ridge deals with this stuff day in and day out, but complains about my farts.
Strange woman.

In reply to PK:

Put cat litter on the area that was vomited on (if you can) should help soak it up a bit. Don't know if it'll work after the valet though.

In reply to hereforded:

Or there's some stuff you can get from petshops that neutralises cat spray. Works pretty well on child vomit too.

In reply to Alphin: my arse atm!!

In reply to Alphin:

There's one particular smell that I can't stand, but never quite worked out what it is. Apparently it could be lanolin, as it's in stuff like soaps, detergents, iron cleaner etc.

In reply to Alphin: The variety of smells in a mortuary :O(