In Ig Nobel Prize-winning invention is now being used, insistently, to help protect nuclear power plants.
The 1993 Ig Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to James Campbell and Gaines Campbell of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, dedicated deliverers of fragrance, for inventing scent strips [also known as “scratch ‘n sniff” strips], the odious method by which perfume is applied to magazine pages.
Today, February 28, 2014, Erin Ailworth reports in the Boston Globe:
Sniffing out trouble at US nuclear plants
A Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station control room operator didn’t pass the smell test last year. The operator couldn’t even get one.
The exam is regularly given to Pilgrim employees — via scratch-and-sniff cards — to make sure they can smell problems such as natural gas leaks, smoking equipment, or fire. But in January 2012, one worker reported that a contract medical assistant hadn’t administered the test during a routine physical. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigated. Its findings, released Wednesday, opened a window on the olfactory rules governing the nation’s nuclear facilities….