Having worked in coatings chemistry for decades I've run into some nasty items. The first one was a test material called "stench". The name fit it perfectly. It smelled like the armpit and ass sweat from every stinking athlete in the world was collected and put in a bottle. It was used for a test that I never ran and didn't care to. The other was an additive for house paint that one of the factory workers tricked me into sniffing from an open drum. My head threw back and I took about ten steps backwards until I snapped out of it. Rookie mistake and a learning moment. Never stick your nose in a drum when someone is hiding the warning label. I became buddies with the guy.
I never cared to find out. I wanted to learn how to design low VOC coatings that didn't exist yet. I figured that this dude was still running this test, at almost 50 years of age, no thanks. I wanted to help move industry into the future, not work with stinky shit from ancient times.
I'll add, three hours later, that I think, not certain though, it was used to test the resistance of wood floor coatings to sweat and cleanign chemicals. The place was horribly rancid when a test was run, even though it was in a back room with a huge exhaust fan. Usually a nickle size of liquid was put on the test surface and covered with a watch glass. Most tests of this type run from a few hours to a couple of weeks.
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