ABSTRACT
The majority of studies on human olfaction are conducted under pristine lab conditions with pure odors delivered to the nostrils. While useful for extending our knowledge of human odor detection and perception as well as integration with the other senses, these experiments tell us little about how humans smell in natural environments—increasingly, the natural environment is the built environment. We must expand our focus of inquiry in order to understand how the human sense of smell operates to discern input from a welter of environmental sensory signals. This is critical because our sense of smell is increasingly challenged by the anthropogenic effects of modern life (which are also impacting animal populations and human populations leading non-urbanized or post-industrial lifestyles). To gather data on human ability to detect identify odors in the built environment, we asked volunteers at we asked volunteers at two different London-area food markets (one urban, one suburban) to smell four odors that were previously validated for UK populations. We were mainly interested in knowing how strong environmental signals (e.g., fish stalls, cooking foods) interfere with the ability to detect and identify odors ‘under one’s nose’. The results indicate that the sensory rich environment of the markets disrupted odor detection and identification ability when compared to lab-based results for UK populations. Further, we found that odors from cooking food were particularly and significantly disruptive. The larger implications of the study are that we must consider the human ecology of olfaction in addition to lab-based studies if we are to understand the functional use of our sense of smell. The applied implication of the study is that olfactory environments vary and that variation results in different lived experiences of the sensory environment.
