Lilacs and memory - loss of smell in a laboratory

Editorial Note: This article was originally written in Korean by Moon Sungsil on her blog, labsooni mom. This translated version has been republished here with her approval.

"Don't you smell something weird?"

My husband sometimes asks me this kind of question, even though he has been living with me for almost 10 years, knowing that I can't smell at all. I cleaned the bathroom floor with a Clorox wipe and asked my son to check the smell of the bathroom like a sniffer dog who is asked to smell drugs.

"It’s ok now, mom. You can't smell it, can you?"

"No, I can't."

I exchanged my sense of smell for a PhD degree at the age of 28 when my goal was just to earn a PhD before 30.

This is how the laboratory in my youth was. There was a space in the middle of the lab so tiny that one could barely pass by if a single bed was unfolded for overnight work. With two incubators and one clean bench, there was a small space where just two people could sit shoulder-to-shoulder beside the wall. On the other side, there was a compartment filled with reagents, a laboratory table, and a sink all side-by-side. And next to the entrance, there was a small room where you could see a cabinet and a fluorescent microscope. I spent five years of my youth there very diligently. Even though no one asked me to do so and no one was nudging me, I worked really hard every weekday and even weekend.

This is how the laboratory in my youth was. My laboratory was also the place where the scent of lilacs used to drift gently through a small window every spring, and purple magnolia would blossom by the window. I cannot remember since which spring I was not able to smell the scent of lilacs anymore. I guess it was around the time when the smell of acetic acid, which had always been felt very pungent, had become dull. But I still could taste, so I was just satisfied with it.

I left behind my lab where I spent all my youth and headed to America for my postdoc. On my first day of work at the new laboratory, I received dozens of training sessions. It was only after receiving all the basic lab safety training – and going to the clinic, getting my blood collected, and getting three or four vaccinations – that I could enter the lab. The whole process took a week.

Today, 12 years later, I have received the same safety training which I completed 12 years ago. In fact, I undergo it every year and the number of safety training courses has been increasing every year. A session on using chemical fume hoods has been included as a compulsory subject this year. Training on how to deal with reagent spills and contamination of the biosafety cabinet was also added as a required course in the previous year and year before that.

A few years ago, one day the laboratory had to be closed for some time. As someone reported to the safety officer due to the peculiar smell after only 10ul of a reagent that hardens a gel called 2-Mercaptoethanol was used in the laboratory. The safety officer came to check and allowed us to enter the laboratory only after ensuring the manual and air circulation worked well. After that incident, whenever I use a chemical reagent, I go to the reagent hood which requires me to open three doors.

I recall the smell of the lilacs in the laboratory where I spent my whole youth after submitting a document confirming that I had received about 20 safety training sessions over the past year. In those days I loved experiments more than my life and was very ignorant about safety. The lab was filled with various reagents, viruses, and bacteria, so we sprayed ethanol dozens of times a day.

Why didn't anyone tell us then, and why were there no safety regulations in the laboratory? I've never smelled my child's baby smell after he was born. I regret losing my sense of smell after the birth of my child. I have taken the smells from my memory from a decade ago, and then taught them to my child so he learns about different smells.

What about the laboratories of today? On a spring day like today, when pollen releases, I recall the smell of lilacs that trickled into my laboratory when I was young.