A Popcorn Smell

Question

When I was a kid my siblings and I liked to play in our backyard like most kids. Our backyard was small and concrete, we lived in LA. Sometimes though while playing outside it will suddenly smell like popcorn. And everytime it smelled like popcorn as the oldest sibling I told all my younger siblings we had to run inside the house and close all the doors and windows. The reason I did this was because everytime it smelled like popcorn it became hard to breathe it was like being choked or suffocating, it made your throat dry and it made you cough real badly. It was impossible to stay in it for even a minute, so everytime we smelled it we all gunned it back to the house, because in the house there was no popcorn smell and you could breathe. I'm a lot older now, and ever since we moved from that house it never happened again. Basically I just want to know what that was? What was it that made it so hard to breathe so suddenly in my childhood backyard?

Answer 1

If the smell you experienced was that of freshly popped popcorn, that would be some carbohydrate toasting and/or some overheated oils (overheated oils liberate hydroperoxides and aldehydes from their fatty acids, generally obnoxious and toxic). But I'm guessing it was that buttery smell? That would be the chemical diacetyl, marketed to the theater industry as an odorant for addition to the oily liquid they squirt on to make "buttery" popcorn. No butter there at all. The diacetyl IS the odor that butter has in it naturally; however, it's cheaper to simulate butter with palm oil (or equivalent) and odorants. Diacetyl, pure, is quite toxic, and workers who manufacture it have MAJOR occupational health issues. So, was it a burnt fat odor or a buttery smell you recall?

Glad to hear you survived; nowadays residents would sic the state on the upwind offender --

--Cheers, -- Mr. d.