Fighting fire with fire: Can lighting a match really deodorize a bathroom?

It works; don’t know why. (Hi, Jon.)

In our household we adhere to the principle that it burns off the methane.

the sulfur masks the odor. But in my opinion the sulfur smells worse than the original odor about 98% of the time.

My partner loves the smell of burnt matches (we work in an animal hospital and some of the alternative smells are mind-bogglingly bad). She wants to develop a room spray that smells like burnt matches.

Mythbusters covered this topic and concluded that matches mask the methyl mercaptan found in flatulence and feces. It does not eliminate the odor, rather push it to the background. More info on the episode here scroll down the page for the recap.

Good Luck!
R

At my place of employment, shall we say, they believe in flush as you go…..

But, rowenaz, the memory lingers on.

Striking a match does mask odors. its the sulfur in the match that combats body odors. also, at the scene of a dead body, a struck match, blown out and sniffed up the nose, kills the odor of a decaying body. its the sulfur.