A change in seasons in any city brings with it an array of smells. Of wilting fallen leaves. Of a kind of brisker air.
For some residents in Birdtown, a small neighborhood on Lakewood’s southeast side, the segue to fall brought with it a more unpleasant stench: a foul, chemical-like odor that is, after a week of hitting the olfactory, without an identified source.
“It’s just one of those smells that keeps lingering,” Cierra Gonzalez, 30, told Scene from her driveway off Lark Street.
“It’s like chlorine,” she said. “Like someone’s up all night, cleaning their pool for hours and hours. Always at nighttime. As soon as the sun goes down.”
What neighbors have described to officials as a “fertilizer”-like stench, which enters their homes off and on throughout week, has since baffled the Cleveland Health Department as it scrambles to pinpoint a source. And put an end to the guessing and headaches.
A segue from summer to fall often brings with it a shift to the senses, and a more sensitive and aware nose. An awareness heightened with anxiety for Birdtown, especially as Toledo deals with the fallout from a recent chemical leak—a spill of glycidyl methacrylate—that’s impacted thousands.
Cleveland Health Department Chief Dave Margolius said that scare, and similar mystery smells in the past, have jolted his air quality staff into a thorough investigation. Since last week, Margolius’ staff has placed air collection canisters in several Birdtown homes, under the hope their readers can decipher a distinct chemical.
“None of our inspectors have smelled it yet; from what I heard, the Lakewood Fire Deptartment hasn’t smelled it either,” he told Scene. “It’s not to say it’s not real. We just haven’t been able to smell it.”
But “we’re gonna try and get to the bottom of it,” he said.
Birdtown, a collection of a dozen blocks east of Madison Park, is mostly single-family homes with Harrison Elementary in the middle.
It’s also one of Lakewood’s most smell-prone neighborhood, for lack of better words. Just south of Birdtown, past the railroad tracks, is an industrial park comprised of recycling centers, building suppliers, mechanic shops, hardware stores and truck repairers.
All potential culprits, in Lakewood Councilman Matt Bixenstine’s mind.
None of those shops have yet been officially marked as sources, he said. But the councilman, a liaison for his constituents and Margolius’ staff, believes a sense of urgency must be understood. No one, to his knowledge, has gone to the hospital. At least yet.
“It’s certainly a quality of life issue,” said Bixenstine, who lives near Madison Park. “It definitely could also be a health and safety issue, as well.”
Gonzalez, who lives with her two daughters off Lark, on the southern edge of Birdtown, said the smell’s irritated her asthma. It’s also given her fits of sneezing.
But mostly, it’s kept her throwing guesses at the unknown.
“I was scared at first. ‘Is it gas?’ It doesn’t smell like gas—but is it?” she said, standing in her driveway. “Is someone out there making drugs?”
And if it’s just a short-sighted plant messing with the wrong chemical?
“I don’t want to stop a company from making their money,” she said, “but if it’s going to disturb the company and our well-being? Then yeah, like, kind of gotta 86 that, you know?”
Two blocks west stood sisters Mary Grace and Lindsey Wrabel, in the front yard of their home off Dowd Avenue.
The irritation was identical to Gonzalez’s. The “sulfur-ish” smell had kept them up at night. It’s managed to creep in through the windows and vents, they said.
Not a total headache. But it’s something to chew on.
“To me, it’s concerning how long it’s stuck around,” Grace said.
“I don’t know about it being a health concern,” Wrabel said. “It just stinks.”
