SUNY Purchase: Stinky like ice-melting food additive
From a tipster: “The following is a Purchase College campus-wide email. It explains why my campus smells bad.”
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To: Apartment Residents
From: Office of Residence Life
Date: January 22, 2010
Re: Strong Odor from Airplane De_icer
Many residents from the apartments have noticed a strong scent in the air the past few evenings. Our College health and safety office[r], ************** , notes that the material described has a slightly citrus odor. It is ethylene glycol which is used by the airport to de-ice planes before takeoff. Ethylene glycol is, among other uses, a food additive, so it is non-toxic to humans. The airport does have a recovery system that captures most of the runoff from the deicing procedure. However, any fluid still on the airplane when it takes off blows off onto the airport and the area around the airport.
Blind Brook runs through the airport before it runs through our campus. Accordingly, much of this fugitive emission finds its way to Blind Brook and runs through our campus giving off the smell you describe.
The airport does have a permit to discharge this material (which they really cannot control). The Westchester County Environmental Police have repeatedly investigated this and found them to be in compliance. There really is nothing that we can do regarding this.
Incidentally, an environmental student as part of an internship is investigating pollution in Blind Brook and this is one of the materials he is looking at.
We hope the odor dissipates soon. With warmer temperatures, there will not be any de-icer used. Thank you.
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Wow. This “Blind Brook” sounds like the Ganges, only more delicious-smelling!
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Ethylene glycol?! That’s sweet perfume in comparison to what I experienced my first week at Rutgers. My ground-floor dorm room was the sad uninhabitable proof that whoever designed the sewer system for the brand-new building didn’t think it through all the way (probably a Rutgers grad).
At the time, I thought it was just a disgusting mechanical error. Turns out it was an omen.