ODOURS THAT WORKERS HATE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 208, 19 August 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

ODOURS THAT WORKERS HATE.

AV hat more delicious than the odours of essential oils? Yet they are abominated by the men at the docks and elsewhere who work in an atmosphere that is impregnated with them. Delightful though they are to the stranger, they produce headache and nausea in those who breathe them for hour after hour.

To some gardeners the odours of certain flowers are no less detestable. That from a variety of primula, indeed, is positively harmful, and there have been many cases of illness due to this and other flowers of the same species. Onion-peelers equally dislike the pungent odour of the bullions roots they handle, not. however, because it prejudically affects their health, but because it clings to them as the limpet to the rock. Tn the Biggleswade district, where many women are employed in peeling pickling onions, this tenacity is curiously manifested. If some of the women go to a concert or other entertainment. the odour of onion soon becomes well - nigh - overpowering, not withstanding that the poolers discard their working clothes hours previously.

Fish-fryers are troubled in much the r ,am(< way. Some .of those who live away from their shops make the best of things by never introducing their working clothes into their residences. They have an outhouse, in which they change before going to and on coming from business. But at best the odour of fried fish is troublesome, while in some circumstances it is a positive nuisance. Everything smells of it. and. unless '■poeial precautions are taken, milk, butter. etc., teste of it.

So objectionable is the smell to some of those engaged in the trade that a year or two ago a young fellow deliberately refused the succession of a business worth £5OO a year. His father proposed fo inaTte it over to him when lio cam" of n</<*. But bo said that he was “ sick of the smell,” and emigrated to Canada. Se.i’or: di-lik' l manv odours which pre not objectionable to ordinary folk. Their chief abomination, perhaps, is a cargo of coffee, which makes a ship hateful. The odour becomes a burden, nnd gives the flavour of coffee to nearly merything on board. Even the very water tastes of eoff-e