Steak-Scented Billboard Entices Drivers

In addition to car exhaust and road grime, travelers along Highway 150 in North Carolina can now enjoy the smell of a barbecue thanks to a new billboard. The work of ScentAir, which provides custom scents for businesses, the advertisement for a local grocer emits the smell of charcoal and black pepper over the highway. "Marketing director Murray Dameron said the beef scent was emitted by a high-powered fan at the bottom of the billboard that blows air over cartridges loaded with BBQ fragrance oil. 'It smells like grilled meat with a nice pepper rub on it,' he explained."

Bet you didn't think of this

[girlintraining]

And what about people who get sick at the smell or sight of meat? Not all of us get all wet at the thought of eating a giant piece of cow. How is this different than wearing thick cologne or perfume, or slathering on aftershave to the point that the hallway still reeks of it hours after your passage? You know what, I'd rather smell burnt gas and diesel than half the things the general public slathers all over their body in the name of attracting the opposite sex. People who wear Axe and Old Spice, I'm looking at you.

And now in addition to my daily routine of overly-scented people, they're adding overly-scented advertising? :( As if flashing, gyrating signs, sometimes moving and smoking, signs that are visible for miles wasn't enough. What next, shooting french fries at passing motorists?

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[hedwards]

The technology should be completely banned. It's hard enough for those with chemical sensitivities to go about their lives without getting sick as it is. Having billboards distributing fragrances which may or may not make people sick is just wrong. It's bad enough for those of us that just have easily irritated noses, I feel sorry for the people that get really sick.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[clone53421]

And what about people who get sick at the smell or sight of meat?

I guess there’s just yet another place they’d have to avoid, as well as not being able to drive on half the streets in the city anyway because of various meat smells emanating from the restaurants and fast-food places.

Then again, maybe it wouldn’t be as big a deal as you seem to think.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[Monkeedude1212]

And what about people who get sick at the smell or sight of meat?

What about the people who get sick at the smell or sight vegatables?

If it had been the smell of a fresh salad would you mind as much?

Don't hold your breath, I don't think this idea will catch on.

Re:A Scentsor?

[wjousts]

Printer -> 4 colors (3 primaries plus black)

Smell-o-whatever -> several hundred different aroma compounds

That's your problem. There is, as far as anybody's been able to demonstrate, such a thing as a primary odor. You have somewhere in the region of 1000 different odor receptors in your nose but they are mostly non-specific and have overlapping sensitivities that make it next to impossible to reproduce all possible aromas from a small subset of chemicals. Couple that with the fact that aroma chemicals are, by necessity, volatile (otherwise you couldn't smell them) and you have a real problem with shelf-life too. If you had an olfactometer with a few hundred chemicals for producing smells, you would be forever having to replace the chemicals because they have evaporated away.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[Sir_Lewk]

Something should be banned nationwide because your wife doesn't like it. Wow, that is some seriously messed up perspective you've got there.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Your wife is an annoying twat.

Re:Other Smells

[KillaBeave]

Bath & Body Works mixed with equal parts sweat and shame.

Re:EIR

[19thNervousBreakdown]

And yet, somehow, people in the 60s managed to not whine like little cunts whenever they walked down the street.

I'm not saying I don't want clean air, but you fags that get the vapors every time you detect the slightest scent that isn't your own b.o., patchouli, or hummus are twice as irritating as anything I've ever breathed, and I used to smoke.

Re:BBQ?

[Hatta]

As much as I love bacon, the smell of good, slowly smoked BBQ beats it every time. There's nothing like stopping at a shack on the side of some southern highway on a cool 90F afternoon in early summer for some ribs that have been smoked all day long. A glass of lemonade to drench the heat from the dry rub and a wedge of corn bread, and you have the finest meal imaginable.

Re:A Scentsor?

[bcmm]

That works because we have only have three types of receptor for colour vision (plus rods for greyscale night-vision). Colours are distinguished by how much they stimulate each receptor, and things that stimulate them in the same proportions are seen to be the same colour, even if the light is not composed of the same frequencies. Thus, you can approximately simulate any combination of frequencies at various intensities by combining, at appropriate intensities, just three frequencies that each stimulate one receptor strongly while having little effect on the other two.

Olafaction is rather less well understood, but almost certainly involves a much greater number of receptors.

Re:EIR

[19thNervousBreakdown]

By mitigate, I mean mitigate your annoyance to others. Don't hide it, you're a fruitcake, just be a fruitcake. But acting like you're saving my fucking life and I should be eternally grateful because you got "chemical" smells banned offends me infinitely more than even your awful b.o. You're doing it because you've concocted some weird theory of irritants and health meters and are worried that your own health meter is red and flashy, so don't pretend to give a shit about others when you know for a fact that even if it was discovered that the smell of tetra-hydra-peroxipterodactyl added 10 years to your life and b.o. caused impotence you wouldn't change a thing.

Also as annoying as I personally find your kind, I don't wish a bike accident or anything on you, and I wouldn't be happy in even the smallest way if you did get plowed by a Dow Chemical delivery truck while biking and coughing your high-pitched cough through the inner city to the farmer's market that's taking up all the fucking parking in my office complex.

I mean, I wouldn't cry 'cause I'm not a fag, but I would genuinely feel bad for you and your family.

Re: Air Pollution

[chronosan]

It's called a craving, it only feels bad because your body chemistry is messed up from eating too much processed soy products. Also in your head, like the difference between being tickled and .... aroused.

Re:Bet you didn't think of this

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation, or it didn't happen.