Dr. Avery N. Gilbert Home Odour Interview

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert Home Odour Interview

With the cold winter setting in, leading the way to damp evenings and hearty dinners, Australia's leading air care brand Air Wick has partnered with a global authority on smell to put the spotlight on home odour, H.O., in Australia, and showcase the first-ever H.O. Index.

Developed in partnership with leading smell scientist and experienced sniffer, Dr Avery Gilbert, the formula behind the Air Wick Home Odour Index now allows us to assess the risk and intensity of smells in the home.

Showcased in a new Home Odour Wheel developed by Dr Gilbert for Air Wick, strong Home Odour (H.O.) is caused by a combination of common household smells, such as cooking of certain foods, pets and smelly sports gear. Just like the embarrassing issue of B.O., when a person becomes too familiar with a smell, their nose no longer detects it. This is called odour fatigue and lends itself to being a cause of H.O. country-wide.

According to research, nearly 3 in 5 Aussies are concerned about how their home smells to others. And this may not be without cause; three in four have visited someone else's home and thought it smelled bad.

Dr Gilbert has provided his expertise and advice to conduct research into the strength and unpleasantness of 51 common household smells, leading to the development of a unique mathematical algorithm for the H.O. Index. The unique index calculates the strength of your typical household smells and then rates the risk of having H.O. into 4 levels; mild, moderate, high and extreme.

According to Dr. Gilbert, 'Home odour can be a common yet often undetected problem affecting many people and their homes. If left untreated, it can be embarrassing and unpleasant, but for many home owners they are often unable to detect the intensity of their H.O. due to odour fatigue.

'Every home has a unique smell – some are just more unpleasant then others. Usually only after returning from a break from home – such as a vacation – can people get a whiff of how their house may really smell to others. I'm pleased to offer a new way to assess the likeliness of bad smells in the home, so people can do something about it should they need to," he continued.

Experts in air care, Air Wick has launched Air Wick Filter & Fresh; the first device of its kind to combat H.O., by trapping bad odours in its OdourTrap™ filter, before releasing fresh fragrance into the air. The result is a clean, crisp fragrance, not a fragrance that simply masks bad odours, meaning families with pets, smokers or mildew can benefit.

Australian fragrance expert Erica Moore, from Fragrances of the World, says it's important to purify the air first, to ensure you are getting the best fragrance experience possible.

'Our homes have a lot of scent-noise to deal with, both fragrant and malodourous. Trying to overcome this type of odour overcrowding is not easy – airflow and fans will only do part of the job. Air Wick Filter & Fresh is an innovation in air care because it neutralises the air first, meaning when the fragrance is released it is crisper and cleaner," she said.

Avery's Nose-Down On Common Household Smells

Body odour (B.O.); Female sweat has higher amounts of MSH-producing lipids which means women (or rather the bacteria that love them) give off significantly more of the sulfur volatiles that smell like tropical fruit and onions. Men on the other hand have more of the HMHA-producing lipids and thus male BO tends to smell cheesy and rancid.

Stinky feet: Fresh foot sweat has little odour! Heavy exercise however makes for sweaty feet and can leave socks and sneakers damp. The type of bacteria that live on our feet feed on the lipids found in this sweat. In doing so, they release a molecule called isovaleric acid which is the main culprit in stinky foot odour. It has a sharp, fetid, somewhat cheesy character.

Greasy, fried and cooked foods: we love our prawns but once they've sat in the fridge a bit too long, they develop a disgusting rancid smell due to trimethylamine. This molecule forms on any leftover bits of fish in your kitchen bins and will quickly deter your guests!

Find out more at www.homeodour.com.au

Interview with Dr. Avery N. Gilbert

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert is a smell scientist, entrepreneur, and author. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and a scientific pioneer in the areas of olfactory mental imagery, multisensory correlates of odour perception, and the psychological factors that bias odour judgments. Gilbert is a fragrance industry innovator who created a sensory psychology research group for a major international fragrance company, founded three olfactory-related startup companies, and served as an advisor to two others. His book What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life was a finalist for the Los Angeles Time Book Prize in Science & Technology, and short-listed for the Royal Society Science Book Prize.

Question: What is home odour?

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert: Home odour is the characteristic smell of your home. Like body odour, it can be slightly unpleasant if you don't manage it. It's something your guests will notice and judge you by. My research showed that 3 in 5 Australian families worry about how their home smells, and 3 in 4 Australian have thought that some else's home smelled bad.


Question: What scents are we at risk of in our homes?

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert: High impact malodours include tobacco smoke and B.O. My research found that adult B.O. has a similar negative impact to a rubbish bin and a smelly kitchen sink. Pet odours are another major source of home odour.


Question: How will we know if our home has a home odour?

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert: Home odour is easily overlooked and it is something your friends and neighbours aren't likely to tell you about directly. A quick and easy way to check your risk of H.O. is to go to homeodour.com.au and fill in the survey. It gives you an instant read-out of your H.O. risk, based on my research.


Question: Why is it difficult for us to smell our own houses odour?

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert: The main reason is the sensory phenomenon of odour fatigue. All of our senses tune out background stimuli; in the case of smell, we stop noticing our home odour because it is always present. Another reason is that we assume that the odour in our home is just the way everyone's home smells. But it isn't! It varies from home to home.

Question: What are the different type of home odour?

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert: My research shows there are seven categories of home odour, made up from a total of 51 bad smells, or malodours. They include malodours associated with cooking, the bathroom, general household, pets, B.O., the kitchen, and tobacco smoke. Any given home may have one or all of these types of smells.


Question: How can we prepare our house and then treat home odour when away for long periods of time?

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert: Home odour builds up over time in a closed house. If you want to come back to a clean smelling home, be sure to empty the kitty litter and the kitchen garbage, air out the dog's blanket, and throw all the dirty laundry into the wash.


Question: How can we remove unpleasant odours in the home?

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert: Attack them at the source. Empty the ash tray, flush the kitchen sink, and make your teenagers pick up their dirty clothes - we can always dream! Once you've knocked out the sources of bad smells, clear the air with Air Wick's brand new Filter & Fresh device. It's a great, innovative new product which filters the air before perfuming it, so you're creating a clean slate before fragrancing your home. From there, you can further enhance that pleasant atmosphere with room sprays, reed diffusers and scented candles.


Question: What smells ignite feelings of being comfortable in a home?>

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert: It's a matter of style and it also varies from room to room. The soothing and relaxing scent of lavender goes well in the bedroom, while a sparkling citrus scent works better in the kitchen. You can use fragrance to set a mood or to enhance your decor.


Question: What scents should we use in our home during the winter months?
Dr. Avery N. Gilbert: The colder months are a good time to create a warmer home atmosphere with more substantial scents like spices, woody notes and tropical florals. I like Air Wick's Multicolour Black candle in Crackling Fire and Cinnamon Spice – it smells like pie!


Question: In winter, how do we eradicate the damp smell that may surround our homes?

Dr. Avery N. Gilbert: Wet towels and moist bathroom rugs are big sources of that damp smell. Air them out, and be sure to get them into the laundry quickly. If you're too slow to avoid the smell, the Filter & Fresh device will help to neutralise that damp air.


Interview by Brooke Hunter