When life stinks, a nasal ranger comes to the rescue

Suddenly, the wind picked up. “We have an oh-my-God smell!” McGinley exclaimed.

Immediately one of his colleagues pressed a Nasal Ranger to his nose. The 14-inch-long smell-measuring device, which looks like a cross between a radar gun and a bugle, is one of McGinley’s most significant inventions. Using terms from one of McGinley’s other standard tools, an odour wheel, a chart akin to an artist’s color wheel that he has been fine-tuning for decades, the team described the stink. “Sour,” one person said. “Decay, with possibly some petroleum,” said another.

Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the smell disappeared. “The wind decided it was going to gift us only a short sniff,” McGinley said. “To tease us.”

Intuitively, humans know to avoid bad smells. Yet for a half-century, McGinley, 76, has returned again and again to society’s stinkiest sites, places very much like this one, in order to measure, describe and demystify smell.

From his unconventional lab in a Minnesota suburb (it actually feels more like a ski lodge) McGinley and his son Mike have established an outsize influence over the measurement and understanding of odour. They have equipped scientists around the world with tools the elder McGinley invented, advised governments on odour regulations and empowered communities near smelly places to find a vocabulary for their complaints and a way to measure what their noses are telling them.

In many ways, the growing demand for McGinley’s services and instruments signals society’s heightened awareness of the power of odour and its potential to make people physically ill or diminish their quality of life. His inventions have taken on a powerful role in a movement to recognise odour as a pollutant, not merely an annoyance, worthy of closer study and perhaps tighter regulation.