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DUMBO Tour, Location 1

Thank you for joining the Smelling Committee today, over 100 years after the Committee’s first olfactory expedition, to map out some of the odors that are here in this neighborhood of New York City.

For a touch of history, I will bring you back to 1891 when, “Irritated by the foul stenches that wafted through their northeast Brooklyn neighborhood, members of the Fifteenth Ward Smelling Committee embarked on a boat trip up Newtown Creek in September… in search of the responsible parties. They reached a point across from the oil refineries where ‘the stenches began asserting themselves with all the vigor of fully developed stenches.’ What the Smelling Committee quickly discovered was that an unusually heavy concentration of industrial activity… had transformed the area around Newtown Creek into an ecological wasteland.” The Committee deemed the Creek the most polluted body of water in the State of New York, and it remains one of the most polluted rivers in the country.

We will not be venturing all the way to Newtown Creek today, but we’re going to investigate what else is smelling in the city.

As you are sniffing, it might be useful to think about how the olfactory system works. Your olfactory regions are moist, fatty and richly yellow. The deeper yellow your olfactory region, the more perceptive your sense of smell.

Inside your nose are about 1,000 odor receptors, of which only about 347 are functional. Each receptor contains thousands of sensory neurons, totaling about 5 million. Dogs, however, possess approximately 220 million olfactory neurons. Unlike neurons in the brain or other organs which are gone forever once destroyed, these neurons in your nose are replaced about once a month and protrude like coral branches. On the neurons are tiny cilia branches to which odorant molecules attach when they are captured in a sniff. These odorant molecules are thought to have different shapes that fit like a lock and key into spaces on the neurons. Musks are like discs and airy odors are often rod-shaped. When the cilia capture the odorants, the neurons send an electric signal to the brain’s olfactory bulb, which is just a few centimeters behind your nose. Although it is presently under intense research, it is theorized that a complex spatial mapping of the different triggered receptors permits the brain to identify and remember a scent. Like popcorn, with real or artificial butter. And about 10,000 other odors.

There is a unique gene that encodes each of the 1,000 odor receptors, making the olfactory system the largest known gene family in the human body. That says a lot about the complexity of odor. By comparison, just three receptors on the retina allow us to distinguish among several hundred color hues. It does help to shut off those three receptors in your retina when trying to smell things, so take time sniffing with your eyes closed.

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brooklyn , smell , art , new york , odor , smelling committee , dumbo