[dingo454]

I generally never comment on this to my coworkers because I want to be polite and keep good relationships (I've had very hard responses to very polite requests just to open the windows in the past, so I simply stopped commenting).

I'm doing this here because I'm seeing this often, and I want to be honest: no, it doesn't really do much, unless we're talking about ~50cm face-to-face conversations maybe (something that would make me back-off quite sharply, gum or not).

Keep in mind the smell after 10 minutes of open-air ventilation is still not a smell I would consider acceptable. For consideration, a very nasty and strong office fart would be in the same line of stench for my nose at that point. Except a fart doesn't tend to cling on for so long.

Sorry for the analogy :(