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by genter 243 days ago
Better than the time that a utility company mailed out a gas-scented flyer to teach people what a gas leak smelled like. 911 was inundated with gas leak calls.

(Search is so fucking useless these days that I can't find anything about it, but pretty sure it was in New York.)

2 comments

I remember a scratch-and-sniff version, rather than just scented (in western CT, in the 1970s - they must have bulk sent them, noone in the neighborhood actually had gas service so it wasn't in with gas bills.) That's enough to find https://hackaday.com/2024/12/03/scratch-and-sniff-stickers-a... and the search https://www.google.com/search?q=scratch-and-sniff+mercaptan&... actually turns up a bunch of present-day gas vendors that will send them to you on request!
Natural gas is odourless, so the smell of a gas leak is artificially chosen. They could have just made all the piped gas smell like croissants instead.