Town Traces Foul Mystery Odor Plaguing Residents To Rotten Radishes Image courtesy of WNEP
Something is rotten in the state of Pennsylvania, where a foul mystery smell has been plaguing residents of one town for weeks. The good news is, they’ve figured out what’s causing the rank odor, and it won’t last forever. The bad news is, right now it smells pretty nasty out there.
According to WNEP, folks around Jersey Shore, PA (which has nothing to do with the beach and is actually hours away from the actual New Jersey coastline) have complained for weeks about an odor that is “enough to gag you” and worse than a “dead deer.”
Several people contacted the sewage plant, in case the rotten eggs odor was linked to human waste. WNEP visited the Jersey Shore Sewer Authority, but the smell wasn’t coming from there.
“If someone could smell our plant five miles (away), then the odor here would be quite overbearing and that’s not the case,” said executive director Shawn Lorson.
Instead, the source is a field of radishes, planted by a company called T.A. Seeds as ground cover for the winter. By the time the ground thaws in the spring, the radishes have mostly decayed.
However, it’s been warmer than expected in recent weeks, so acres and acres of crops are decaying faster, a representative from T.A. Seeds explains.
“You know you are going to get more odor if you have this warm weather in January. You are going to smell it a lot quicker,” she says.
The good news for long-suffering residents? Once it gets colder, the smell should dissipate.
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