Waking up to the smell of wasabi
You might be familiar with the green horseradish paste that comes with sushi — wasabi. Scientists in Japan used the pungent smell of wasabi as an alarm to alert people of a fire. This idea seems incredible, but it was motivated by efforts to create an alarm system effective for people with hearing difficulties.
- Wasabi smoke alarm. Photo by Air Water Safety Service.
Japan’s news stations Asahi and NHK described the progress of this project from 2006 to 2008 (link to news in Japanese text). The basic structure of the alarm is as follows. A mix of wasabi and mints create a bitter and stinging smell that stimulates the mucous membrane within the nose. This smell is then collected into a pressurized can. When the fire alarm bell rings, the machine detects the sound and relays an electric signal to trigger the release of the wasabi smell.
Medical equipment manufacturers collaborated to produce this wasabi alarm. Experiments conducted by the Shiga University of Medical Science illustrated the efficacy of this wasabi alarm to wake up people who are sound asleep. For a subject pool of 14 males and females in their 20s to 40s, the researchers found that except for one person who had a stuffy nose, all other 13 people woke up within 2 minutes. Four of these subjects had a hearing impairment, and these people woke up within thirty seconds. The fastest record-response was ten seconds. After experiencing the pungent smell, the test subjects strongly supported the implementation of this wasabi alarm device.
This invention received international attention in the Ig Nobel Prize and in news reports by BBC and Reuters. The following video shows BBC’s report on the wasabi alarm.
Other fire alarm systems made for the deaf have used light and vibrations but with mediocre success. Light is hard to notice while asleep, and vibrations require the machine to be worn by the person at all times to detect any movement. Researchers hope that this wasabi alarm system would be used effectively in conjunction with these earlier alarm systems.
“Achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think” is the core principle of the Ig Nobel Prize. The humorous aspect of the wasabi alarm caught my attention. However, I soon started to question the use of such an invention, and this curiosity directed me to read about the weaknesses of a sound-based alarm. This research for sure made me think.
October 24th, 2011 at 2:06 pm
I really liked this idea. It makes so much sense. I know last year I experienced a very memorable incident where I swallowed too much horseradish to the point that it felt like my nose was being ripped off. I can definitely see how this would wake a person up, regardless of their consciousness. I would wonder how much the whole mechanism costs to run. I’m not sure how much wasabi runs for these days. Great post! I’ll be sure to try a little bit more wasabi on my next sushi roll, for scientific purposes of course.
October 24th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
I actually love this idea! I think its very appropriate that you mentioned: “Achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think” this was indeed my first impression (laugh and tell my friend) but when i think about it it really starts to make sense. We all know that feeling when we eat too much wasabi (terrible) and having the smell be the sense that can wake us up when we’re sleeping is a really great idea!
October 24th, 2011 at 7:38 pm
I didn’t know Wasabi could smell that strong, or maybe after it’s been mixed with the mints. The idea is both funny and makes perfect sense. People who can’t hear alarms can now smell. But again, people have different sensitivities to their senses.
October 29th, 2011 at 11:18 pm
It’s really great of them to come up with this kind of an alert system because deaf/disabled people are often overlooked. As weird as this system sounds, it would probably save a lot of lives. It is unfortunate that if a person has a stuffy nose, it would not work, hopefully they would come up with other additional alarms for those situations.
October 30th, 2011 at 11:08 am
This is an ingenious improvement of alert systems. Even I sometimes slept through couple fire alarms because I would be so heavily asleep that I would not hear the alarm. Thankfully all those times have been false alarms but imagine if they were real! Also, this is extremely helpful to those who cannot hear or see. I hope there will be more improvements like this in the future.