This Arabic woman at work wears a gallon of perfume, and really heavy floral perfume, at that. People are always making remarks about it. She walked into my boss’ office today, and within seconds, the scent was everywhere. She stuck around and talked with my boss for 5 minutes, then left.

Immediately afterwards, my boss says “Watch this!”. He goes into the analytical lab and gets a gastight syringe (the ones used for taking reactor headspace samples). He then takes an air sample from his office and injects it into a GC.

Turns out that her perfume was not only detectable, but it was over the allowed indoor concentration for volatile organic compounds! Basically, we determined that she is a source of hazardous pollution. Ah, working for the government.