re: #75 dat_said

I’ve had the opportunity to be downwind from feed lots, paper mills, sugar beet plants, and a Quaker Oats facility (the worst of all of them). The feed lot and sugar beet plants allowed me to precisely determine which way the wind was blowing on my college campus.

The most interesting downwind experience I’ve had is working next to a dog food manufacturer. Some days it would smell like fetid and rancid milk, some days a sour chocolate smell, and some days I would exit the building and think “mmm, barbecue” and then I’d think “oh, eww”

Could smell a paper mill in Canada when there was an east wind when I lived in northern New York state.* I recall that driving through Lackawanna, NY and the steel mills there in the early 70s there were some particular smells. Passing feed lot/pig farms while on various highways.

I’d say the worst was driving north in DelMarVa and passing downwind of some of the Tysons plants. Overpowering smell of rancid chicken fat.

* - Apparently that same wind was also carrying fluorides being exhausted by the Reynolds Metals aluminum smelting operation that lay in the same direction from us. The local dairy farmers won a suit against them about it eventually.