An ‘Industrial-Scale Glade Plug-In’ Masks Odors from L.A.’s Urban Oil Fields
Public health advocates express concern that the industrial odorizers could be harmful to human health
A decade ago, when it was not uncommon for the breeze through Los Angeles’s University Park neighborhood to carry the scent of natural gas, the residents of the area began falling ill. They complained to Martha Dina Argüello, the executive director of the nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility, about nausea and nosebleeds; air that burned the eyes and throat, as if they were cooking with chilies; the smell of gas, rotten eggs, and, curiously, overripe guava. They blamed the nearby AllenCo drill site, a collection of 21 oil wells operating on land leased from the Catholic Archdiocese of L.A.
“As we worked with more communities, we kept hearing the same story,” Argüello tells OneZero. “‘It smells like green apple,’ or, ‘it smells like strawberries.’”
Argüello worried that the residents were breathing in chemical odor suppressants — fragrances used by dumps and industrial sites to mask bad smells. She had worked on fragrance issues in the past, and she knew these scents often contained phthalates and other endocrine disruptors, synthetic chemicals that mimic hormones and confuse the body…
