Case History: DEAD BODY

By: Carol Cowan Location: New Norway, Alberta, Canada Date: January 1990

On January 18, 1990 an elderly gentleman passed away i his one bedroom apartment which was about 700 square feet in i loor area. The person died in the bathroom, and by the time his body was discovered 11 days later a substanti 1 amount of decomposition had occurred. The apartment was cleaned by the Housing Development that owned that apartment complex. The carpet, furniture and drapes were removed from the apartment. Even the toilet ~ the bathroom was removed because body fluids from the deceased had seeped under it and soaked through to the plywood sub-i looting. The apartment was then fumigated on three separate occasions

an attempt to deodorize it. The chemicals from the fumigation process did nothing to reduce the odors ~ the apartment, and some might even argue that they may have even compounded the problem.

On the day that Carol Cowan and two other supervisors were asked to check the apartment by one of the building representatives the odor was still unbelievably strong. They could smell the odor in the hallway at least 10 feet away from the door of the apartment. Upon entering the apartment these odors were so intense that they caused nausea among the whole group, and one member lost the contents of his stomach several times by vomiting. The apathy ent would have been almost impossible to work in because of the stench so each person took a 4 oz. bag of NonScents and held it over their face covering up the nose and mouth. This hand-held gas mask worked remarkably well. It did not cover their face entirely so they still got momentary jolts of stench, but otherwise the intense odor was quite well neutralized and they were able to work in a reasonably comfortable mam^ler as long as they held the NonScents bag over their face.

Product application began by distributing one case of caps (2 lb. bags) throughout the apartment in con venient places such as the floor, shelves, kitchen counter, etc. They sprinkled 16 cans of NonSeents powder on the floor. In addition they used 2 boxes of 4 oz. bags (each box contains 4 of the 4 oz. bags). One box was used in the kitchen cabinets, and the other 4 bags were put in the refrigerator which had been previously cleaned out. Then they turned on a ceiling fan and slightly opened a window, and brought ~ another electric fan to circulate the air in the apartment.

After just two days most of the odor, perhaps about 75~o had been eliminated. The product was left in place for about one week. After a week the caps were taken out and desorbed by being put in a plastic garbage bag and left out in the sun far about 2 days. The caps seemed to be reasonably well regenerated even ~ that short time by using the solar oven method of Resorption. Note that this was January ~ Alberta when heat from sunlight is a rather precious commodity. However, this method was sufficient to desorb the product so that it could be used again for another week in that apartment. Most of the odor had been removed from the apartment during the first week. The reapplication of the caps w as intended to pick up any remaining odors.

After the second week all the product was removed from the apartment and it was completely odor free. The management of the apartment complex planned to tear out the walls and floors of the un t after it had been fumigated, but now that it was odor free, they did not have to do that. Needless to say, they were very impressed with the product called NonScents.