Why Other People’s Farts Smell So Damn Nasty To Us
All those years of ripping silent-but-deadly farts haven’t gone as unnoticed as you’d hoped.
By Jessie Schiewe
There’s a reason we hold our breath around stinky smells (and it’s not just to protect our noses).
Whoever smelt it usually didn’t deal(t) it.
More often than not, it’s actually the opposite that is true.
Most of us are immune to the smells of our own farts, having grown used to them over the years. Our brains subconsciously tune the odors out, making us typically unaware of how potent they truly are.
Farts from strangers, however, are a whole other story. Though smell is of course subjective, most of us consider gas passed by others to be worse than our own.
In some cases, this might very well be true, but certainly not in all. We’re just oblivious to our own stench and evolutionarily hardwired to distrust foreign and pungent smells.
But why do other people’s farts actually smell worse to us?
Smell is actually our oldest sense. Back when humans were mere prokaryotic cells, the one and only strength we had to survive was chemodetection — the ability to detect chemical smells and tastes in the environment.
Likely because of this, humans are programmed to be more aware of new scents, especially rank ones, because they could be signs of danger or disease.
In fact, bad smells can even make us sick, which explains why some of us intuitively hold our breath in stinky bathrooms despite knowing that the stench won’t physically harm us.
Although sometimes they can.
Because farts contain germs and fecal matter, there is always the risk that under the right circumstances, they can transmit illnesses or disease. Pathogens like Streptococcus pyogenes, which causes tonsillitis, scarlet fever, heart disease, skin rashes, and other bacterial infections, can be released through a fart and passed onto someone else via a strong whiff.
The good news is that this doesn’t happen very often — at least not in today’s world.
In order for someone to get sick from a stranger’s smelly fart, it needs to be released uninhibited into the world and not blocked by clothing. This was a problem for our ancestors, who ran around naked, but it’s not so much for us thanks to our penchant for wearing pants and underwear.
Unless you’re at a packed nudists’ party, you can breathe with confidence around strangers knowing that the clothing they have on will both trap and filter any contaminants.
Even a sterile operating room will remain pretty much still-sterile — or at least not at risk of infecting a patient — if a doctor or nurse farts in it as it’s being used.
We know this because a scientist in Australia, after wondering about this very scenario, literally tested it out in 2000. Using one butt, two petri dishes, and two different farts — one clothed, the other bare — Karl Kruszelnicki determined that the risk of developing an infection from flatulence, though real, “should not be considered alarming” if the person passing gas is dressed.
Don’t forget that when you smell a fart, you’re technically ingesting its particles.
People have also wondered about the converse of this scenario: Can smelling farts, instead of being dangerous, actually be healthy for you?
For one week in 2014, people were pretty sure they were.
A press release from the University of Exeter, titled “Rotten egg gas holds key to healthcare therapies,” was massively misinterpreted by the media which churned out viral stories propagating the belief that smelling farts could prevent cancer, cure disease, and help you live longer.
As it turns out, that’s not what the actual article, published in the journal MedChemComm, stated in the least.
“None of this research says you should go and inhale farts,” Dr. Csaba Szabo, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Texas in Galveston who collaborated on the University of Exeter study, told NBC News.
This is probably for the best. Though the prospect of curing lymphoma by standing downwind from someone sounds delightfully easy, it would also be pretty painful on our noses — especially if we aren’t related to or in a relationship with the person.
This is because the more time you spend with someone, the more foods you eat in common, the more physical interactions you have, and the more DNA you share, the less likely you are to be offended by their smelly farts.
Sharing meals and eating the same foods can have similar impacts on our microbiomes which in turn can lead to similar smelling toots. And, because they smell so much like our own, we’re less likely to be offended by our parent’s, sibling’s, or partner’s farts — or to even take note of them.
Family members also share similar smelling farts because their gut bacteria is close to being the same. For instance, the amount of methane you produce is determined largely by your genetics, meaning that if your parents rip big, smelly ones, chances are you do, too.
The more time you spend with someone, the more similar your farts will smell.
Even if someone is not related to you, spending a lot of time or being in close proximity to them can lead their farts to smell less noxious to you. Embarrassing though it may be, it might even be a good idea to pass gas in front of your partner so that they get accustomed to their smell and further integrate your microbiome into their own.
When we’re out in public and confronted with a nasty smelling fart, it’s mainly the fact that we don’t recognize the odor that offends the most and not the smell itself.
Farts from strangers are really just new and weird to us, a reflection of the vastly different lives we all lead from one another. Influenced by everything from their cellular makeup to what they had for dinner, farts from strangers are just sourced from a different bouquet of odors, and not necessarily smellier than our own.
This, however, is partly up for debate. There are some experts who say that farts emitted by women are stronger smelling because females possess higher concentrations of hydrogen sulfide. There are also reports stating that women have better senses of smell than men.
Even if you stay mum about farting, other people are bound to notice the stench.
As we age, though, our ability to detect smells declines whether we are male or female. Race also plays a role in this, with African-Americans and Hispanics experiencing faster rates of olfactory loss than Caucasians.
Though some might bemoan the numbing of a sense that once brought them joy — think hot coffee in the morning, roses in the garden, meat on the grill — not being able to smell so well might also be a coup because the older we get, the stinkier our farts become.
Our slower gastrointestinal systems are more prone to constipation, and that problem is made even worse by medications and decreased levels of physical activity. Because it is harder for us to go to the bathroom, our poop stays in our colon longer, fermenting and building up some gnarly smelling gas.
With all of this being said — the knowledge that your smelly farts are heinous to strangers and will become even more so as you age — you should never hold them in. Doing so won’t exactly cause you damage, but it won’t avoid the problem either, instead manifesting itself as supremely bad breath.
Because when you clench in a fart, it doesn’t just disappear. The gases are absorbed into your body and eventually released through the next-best hole: your mouth.
Neither foul breath nor gnarly farts are ideal, but at least you know you have a choice the next time you feel gas bubbling up inside of you.
To let ‘em rip or hold ‘em in? That is the question.
JESSIE SCHIEWE IS THE EDITOR OF OK WHATEVER. SHE BELIEVES IN MERMAIDS AND THRIFT SHOPS FOR EXERCISE.
Other (smelly) articles:
