Odour can be defined as a mixture of gases in the air that we can smell, which can both be pleasant or unpleasant smells (Victoria, 2020). Odour pollution refers to these unpleasant smells, which although can simple be unpleasant, it can have other risks associated with it. Milder negative externalities include feelings of disgust or discomfort, which can lead to headaches, nausea, vomiting and also behavioural changes. (Shukla, 1991) It has been proven that our sense of smell gives a startling fast response to potentially dangerous situations, jerking us away from the stench and less willing to be in the source area as much (Genter, 2019). The surrounding houses and businesses have the potential of being greatly impacted if nobody wants to go around that area. More serious health effects can occur when the negative smells are also toxic in its nature, particularly to the respiratory system. Soot and dust are common smells that are cancerous and can damage our lungs and have a knock on effect on our body (Niranjan, 2017).

With the reporting of the smell, the citizen can also describe the smell. Here, the most used words to describe the malodour were put together to get a better understand of what kinds of smells were most critical. Industrial smells, mainly oil and asphalt were smelled, as can be seen by the graph.

Understanding the demographics of a region affected by malodourous industrial sources can highlight socio-economic disparities across cities and neighborhoods with regards to zoning, environmental regulation and public health implications. From the map below, people who live in the census tracts most affected by the smells reported tend to have lower to middle bracket of median income and lower property values, as well as lower median age of residents with less average rooms on the property and are rentals vs owned.

Using the drop down menu below you can control what demographic features are shown by the choropleth layer made of polygons overlaying the base map, and you can click and drag customized windows of time to filter the heat map data.

There seem to be three main clusters of 'stinky' data: the north-most is in the R-4 zoning, which classfies as residential. It borders more residential (R-6) and ROS (recreation open source) zoning. The clusters around South Portland are also in residential areas (A, G) but with neighbouring commerical (C) and limited business zoning (LB). Given the zoning, the smells to be affecting mostly households and community spaces, even though the smells are industrial.