Get a Whiff of This: How Some Carpinterians Learned to Sniff Pot for Science

Cannabis critics had a chance this year to lend their noses to a controlled odor study at one of the many greenhouse “grows” that ring the seaside town of Carpinteria.

Last August, Coastal Blooms Inc., a group of cannabis greenhouse operators, commissioned a 48-hour controlled study at Roadside Blooms, a four-acre operation at 3684 Via Real. They had equipped the greenhouses with carbon filters or “scrubbers” from the Netherlands, and they wanted to find out how well the scrubbers working to get rid of the stench of pot.

The group rented an “olfactometer” from Germany and flew in Dutch engineers to help with the study. They bagged 260 air samples inside two Roadside greenhouses of similar size at harvest time, when the “skunky smell” of cannabis is strongest. They also took samples upwind and downwind of each greenhouse, on the roof ridge lines and at the open roof vents.