Even as a chemist today you get to recognize the smells of chemicals even if barely exposed.
It's typically only the most toxic that you’d use such equipment to not be exposed at all (but then we tend to avoid those anyways).
You start to recognize the smell of ethers like diethyl ether or tetrahydrofuran (which I love the smell of). Sulfides are obvious (smell terrible).
I made a mistake a couple times smelling things I shouldn’t.
Once was diazomethane gas - a potent akylating agent and explosive. I instinctively put the roundbottom flask to my nose to smell, but realized after how dumb it was. No idea if i heavily alkylated my nasal passage epithelial cells or not, but no side effects.
The other time was a brominated aryl compound similar to tear gas. That was amazingly painful and felt like getting wasabi up my nose despite there being almost nothing left in the flask.
One time which wasn't intention was smelling CbzCl (benzyl chloroformate, a reagent used to add a protecting group to nitrogens). I didn't intentionall smell it, but measured it outside the fume hood in a syringe. It smells pretty awful, but what I realize is that the molecule must bind to your nasal passages (proteins have lots of nitrogens) because I could smell it for the next 24 hours. After smelling it that long, the smell now makes me nauseous pretty quickly.
As a kid I had a Lionel chemistry set. It had a chunk of sulfur that I lit up with a match. Then, curious, I took a deep snork.
Mistake!
Only a few years later in chem class did a teacher show how to use your hand to waft fumes from an open beaker or flask so that you can catch a tiny whiff.
A friend of mine works as a chemist in waste disposal and I reckon a shallow sniff is a pretty common first line tool for identification / confirmation. I doubt it is ideal, but nobody would lie too much about what is in that barrel right..?
It's a low boiling point oxygenated hydrocarbon solvent, so it smells like you'd expect - think things like rubbing alcohol, ethanol (vodka), paint thinner (the ones that have alcohols in them).
Diethyl ether smells very "heavy", for lack of a better word, and pungent. It's almost overpowering, and can become unpleasant after a while.
Tetrahydrofuran (which is just diethyl ether with both ends of the ethyl groups bonded to form a ring) has a "lighter" smell, isn't overpowering and smells "clean" to me. It's still a oxygenated solvent, so it's not pleasant like the smell of flowers or spices, but to me it's more similar to ethanol which is relatively pleasant.
>I am left wondering if anything approaching a "standard" exists for smells ...
You can buy tasting kits for whiskey or wine. They include individual scents like peaty, smokey, oaky, blackberry even some weird ones like band-aid. You can use them to train your nose to deconstruct the smell of whiskey or wine.
It's really eye opening (or nose opening if you will). Since you might even find you suddenly agree with the tasting notes on the bottle.
Interesting. Also, if I may, it seems to me there's more individual variation in "smell discernment" ability among individuals than there is for other senses.-
ie. so called "super-noses" vs. "scent deaf" people.-
As a side note, ether is a lovely smell diluted but inhaled concentrated (for recreational purposes – it's a bit like alcohol in effect) it's bloody brutal, burning your nose & lungs.
(They used to be sweets in the UK called Victory V's which contained a very small amount of ether, and they were just lush. Bought some recently and found whatever additives that was had been removed, oh woe :) )
It's typically only the most toxic that you’d use such equipment to not be exposed at all (but then we tend to avoid those anyways).
You start to recognize the smell of ethers like diethyl ether or tetrahydrofuran (which I love the smell of). Sulfides are obvious (smell terrible).
I made a mistake a couple times smelling things I shouldn’t.
Once was diazomethane gas - a potent akylating agent and explosive. I instinctively put the roundbottom flask to my nose to smell, but realized after how dumb it was. No idea if i heavily alkylated my nasal passage epithelial cells or not, but no side effects.
The other time was a brominated aryl compound similar to tear gas. That was amazingly painful and felt like getting wasabi up my nose despite there being almost nothing left in the flask.
One time which wasn't intention was smelling CbzCl (benzyl chloroformate, a reagent used to add a protecting group to nitrogens). I didn't intentionall smell it, but measured it outside the fume hood in a syringe. It smells pretty awful, but what I realize is that the molecule must bind to your nasal passages (proteins have lots of nitrogens) because I could smell it for the next 24 hours. After smelling it that long, the smell now makes me nauseous pretty quickly.