It could be suicidal to dismiss persistent smell of cooking gas, rotten egg or nail polish in your vicinity as a mere nuisance. Environmentalists say community complaints of odours from chemical factories, burning garbage dumps or traffic pollution can have much more to them than mere nuisance value. Most of these smells can be indicative of the presence of potentially harmful and toxic chemicals in the air that can affect the health of people as well as the country’s economy.

They advise pollution-impacted communities to use their senses and keep a vigil over local neighbourhood industries, report such incidences and demand action from the regulatory authorities.

According to the NGO Community Environmental Monitoring adviser, Mr Nityanand Jayraman, the sweet smell of nail polish may indicate the presence of acetone, rotten cabbage of sulphur-carrying mercaptans and rotten egg or sewage-type smell of hydrogen sulphide in your vicinity.

Most of these are highly harmful and toxic chemicals. In fact, the typical public toilet-type smell is the indictor of presence of a category of chemicals called indole in the ambient air.

“Public health ramifications of air pollution are immense and despite India being poised to nearly double its industrial capacity in coming years, the country is still pathetically behind in terms of its infrastructure to safeguard its environment or the health of people from pollution. Which is why communities have to take lead to monitor the ambient air quality in their surroundings,” he suggests.

A study commissioned by the MoEF in 1995 had pegged the total environmental losses due to air pollution to be equivalent to about one per cent of the GDP in terms of health costs and lost man-days.

To be able to monitor, pollution-impacted communities do not need expensive analytical techniques to confirm whether there is pollution in the air they breathe or not. They can use senses of smell, sight and feelings to systematically monitor, document and report such incidences and demand an action from regulating authorities on air pollution.

Your nose can become a reasonably sensitive indicator of pollution. Clean air does not smell, but the presence, kind and intensity of odour are inputs enough to indicate air pollution. Citing the example of such vigil by some communities in Cuddalore, Jayaraman said people there used odour sensitivity to successfully highlight that they have been assailed by various kinds of chemicals.

The villages in the area conducted odour-monitoring studies for over 14 weeks, identified and documented 283 odour instances of which 256 were very intense. Out of these instances they identified 36 smells, including that of nail polish, ripe chikoo fruit, cooking gas, sewage etc, most of which were identified as harmful, toxic and even carcinogenic chemicals.

So next time you smell something persistently fishy in the air, take note.