Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today's episode is a classic from
Speaker 1: our erstwhile host, Christian Sagar. This one was a script
Speaker 1: in our old YouTube days, and we found that it
Speaker 1: was one of our most controversial Why does gasoline smell
Speaker 1: so good? For those of you thinking what gasoline smells gross,
Speaker 1: just believe us. For some folks, it smells delicious. Hey,
Speaker 1: they're brain Stuff gang. I'm Christian Sagar, and have you
Speaker 1: ever been to the gas station before filling up your
Speaker 1: gelope when suddenly your nostril hairs twinged with an aromatic
Speaker 1: burning sensation. It's like the wise sages of Leonard skinnerd
Speaker 1: once saying, oh that smell. Can't you smell that smell?
Speaker 1: I'm talking about gasoline, people, Why does it smell so good? Well?
Speaker 1: The first answer is pretty simple. Actually, gasoline or petrol
Speaker 1: as our friends across the pond like to call it,
Speaker 1: contains a chemical hydrocarbon called benzene used to boost its
Speaker 1: octane rating, and benzine naturally has a sweet scent to
Speaker 1: it that our noses are specially sensitive to. In fact,
Speaker 1: it evaporates so quickly that you'd smell benzene instantly if
Speaker 1: you just put some in a dish in the same
Speaker 1: room you're in. It is so pungent we can get
Speaker 1: a whiff of it if there's only one to five
Speaker 1: parts per million in the air we breathe. And benzine
Speaker 1: is not just in gasoline. We use it in plastics, pesticides,
Speaker 1: and detergents. It's also in a lot of mass produced toys,
Speaker 1: so it's possible you're associating the smell of gasoline with
Speaker 1: that new toys smell from your childhood. But don't let
Speaker 1: its odor get its enchanting hooks and you too far.
Speaker 1: Because skinnerd also had it right when they saying, oh,
Speaker 1: that smell, the smell of death surrounds you. That's right.
Speaker 1: The smell of benzine can be euphoric, but it's also toxic.
Speaker 1: If you inhale large amounts of it, it actually attacks
Speaker 1: your nervous system. Luckily, it's so pungent that we have
Speaker 1: unty of warning before hazardous exposure. That's why it can
Speaker 1: start to make you nauseous or give you a headache
Speaker 1: after a while, and the consequences of sniffing too much
Speaker 1: benzine and gasoline are not pretty. Inhalent abuse leads to
Speaker 1: loss of consciousness, seizures, liver injury, and distress within your
Speaker 1: heart and lungs. Keep going after that and you're looking
Speaker 1: at neurological impairment and straight up brain damage. The E. P. A.
Speaker 1: Osha and Who also categorized benzine as a carcinogen. The
Speaker 1: cancers it's associated with the most are leukemia and lymphoma.
Speaker 1: And get this, there's possibly another less dangerous reason why
Speaker 1: we like the smell of gasoline so much. A study
Speaker 1: published in two thousand nine issue of Addiction Research and
Speaker 1: Theory indicates that gasoline smells better to us when we're hungry.
Speaker 1: It found that people rate the smell of gasoline as
Speaker 1: being more pleasant and intense the longer it had been
Speaker 1: since they had last eaten. More research is obviously required,
Speaker 1: but there seems to be a link between our degree
Speaker 1: of hunger and our odor perception of gasoline. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: why gas stations make such a killing on selling junk food.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Christian and produced by Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet How Stuff Works Dot com