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FRIDAY, June 13, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Your nose may hold the key to recovery from a terrifying event.
Scientists from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia went to the World Trade Center one month after the infamous terrorist attack to "capture" the odors of the site. At the time, the wreckage was still burning.
"We tried to find out what the compositions of the odorants at the World Trade Center site were," says George Preti, a member of Monell Chemical Senses Center and co-author of a report on the subject that was presented June 11 at the American Chemical Society's regional meeting in Princeton, N.J.
It all started with a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, whose offices had been located next to the twin towers. When the planes hit the towers, Journal employees literally ran for their lives. After the attack, the offices were relocated to a different site, still in lower Manhattan. "[This reporter] reported certain symptoms every day going to work," Preti says. "He was very struck by these feelings of anxiety and depression and other bizarre feelings that he was getting."
The reporter contacted Pam Dalton, another Monell faculty member. "Apparently, it is Dr. Dalton's hypothesis that odors encountered at disaster sites or during traumatic events may have a lasting psychological effect on individuals who are traumatized," Preti explains. Dalton could not be reached for comment.
This in itself is not an entirely new theory. "Odors have a strong impact on memory and emotions," says Dr. Alan Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago. "When we look at different times in our history, we find different odors tend to induce flashbacks" in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
For the Vietnam War, the smell of burning diesel fuel does it, Hirsch says. People who had flashbacks from the Korean War describe the smell of canvas or tents. And flashbacks from the first Gulf War could actually be brought on by the taste (not smell) of bottled water.
Of course, one does not have to have PTSD to react to a familiar smell. French novelist Marcel Proust is famous for describing the nostalgic effect of smells in his epic Remembrance of Things Past. The smell of a certain pastry brought back memories of childhood.
"You can induce flashbacks in normal people. Then it's memory, vivid olfactory memories," Hirsch says. "There's also this phenomenon that people have in and around a traumatic event, a very vivid, perceived memory of what was going on at the time. They're called flashbulb memories. We do know that along with a flashbulb memory, you can have vivid odor recall."
As Proust described, odors can also elicit good memories. In a study of "olfactory-induced nostalgia" in 989 people in 45 states and 39 countries, Hirsch found 85 percent of people reported that odors made them nostalgic. The number one odor cited was baked goods. Otherwise, the specific odors tended to depend on region and time period. People on the East coast said flowers did the trick, while those in the Midwest said it was farm animals. On the West Coast it was the smell of a barbecue. People born between 1900 and 1930 were more likely to describe a natural smell as evocative of childhood. Those born between 1930 and 1980 were more likely to name artificial smells such as Play-Doh, Pez, and jet fuel.
In the case of the World Trade Center, the point was not to induce frightening flashbacks but to somehow use the odors to aid the recovery process. Dalton and two of her staff members gained access to the cleanup site to collect odors. Preti then did the analysis of the samples. "It was my job to try to identify what they were and, once we identified them, we can reconstitute them."
Dalton's hope is to use synthetic odor "bouquets" similar or, hopefully, identical to the odors found at the World Trade Center to help desensitize rescue workers, residents, or anyone else experiencing odor-mediated flashbacks. "You show them what's at the root of their flashbacks," Preti says. And hopefully that knowledge will short circuit the smell-anxiety feedback mechanism.
More information
For more on posttraumatic stress disorder, visit the National Center for PTSD or the PTSD Alliance.
