Constant smoke smell in nasal passages.

[PN904]

I am a non-smoker. We are a non-smoking family. I am not around smokers at all. Why do I have the constant smell of smoke in my nose. It used to be just an occasional thing, but lately it seems to be all the time. I am concerned that this is a symptom of something I don't know about. The smell is strong. I used to notice it about a half hour after taking my Allegra-D 12 hr. tablets, but now I smell it much more often. Am I going crazy or is there something to this I'm not aware of. Has anyone else experienced this? Please help?

[rmoody11]

This smell started yesterday and today still and I did have some dental work, (an old root canal) in a molar worked on. I feel a little bit of some sinus thing going on and I know in the past I have smelled weird smells during/tail end of sinus infections. Also two weeks ago I was exposed to some mold and it got into my chest. It was pretty much gone and then this happened. It's been constant for several hours now and getting on my nerves.

[lcb2000]

I also smell cigarette smoke when no one around me is smoking. It started a year ago shortly after I had my dental implant. My implant got infected too, so I'm thinking there must be a correlation with phantosmia and dental implants. I don't smell the smoke all the time, but it comes and goes. Sometimes it stays for a week at a time. I had a CT scan, an MRI and an EEG in addition to meeting with a neurologist who told me there is no sign of seizure or brain tumors. Are you still smelling smoke and have you found a remedy?

[jimbo400]

I have had the same smell for quite so time now . Almost like a burning smell. I have watch my habits and I think I linked it to RAINX windshield washer fluid. I noticed when Im on long trips my eyes start burning and the smell is so strong I keep letting in fresh air in my side window every few miles. Now some might say my car must be a mess but i have a really nice loaded truck so I keep it very clean. It wouldnt always have the smell but after a snow or ice storm when I used the washer fluid for the deicer in the fluid thats when I would get the smell. My truck is diesel so I thought exhaust was coming into the cabin air. But then a break thru my wifes car had the same smell but no other car I was in had that smell. So it hit me the only thing in common between them was the dang washer fluid. My chest even hurt slightly when breathing.

[Asmokefreeworld]

I read all these comments.  Hours of them.  No one has mentioned anything about the harmful toxins of actual cigarrette smoke as being probable culprits.  We have all been exposed in our lifetimes.  Either by living near people who smoked, or in homes where people smoked, or buildings where people smoked.  Why else would people smell cigarrette smoke, if they hadn't been exposed?  They damage our olefactory systems.  Many never to regain normal sense of smell.  Their toxins live in us, circulating within us, destroying our sense of smell.  And coming back to haunt us.  Just another reason to ban cigarrettes.  We should add these problems to the many class action suits against the companies who insist on manufacturing them still, and try to tell us all they aren't causing these serious health problems.  PS   I started having this problem after visiting a friend whose house reeked of smoke.  She said sorry for the smoke, do you mind?  I should have turned around and not visited, but stayed an hour or so.  It's been more than 4 months...plagued with this smoke smell.

[Lorimus]

I had these same symptoms about 2 years ago.  I thought it may be coming from a bad tooth because I read somewhere a bad tooth infection could lead to some weird sinus smells.  I had the tooth fixed and the smells went away, I actually forgot about the problem until recently.  That tooth has a crown on it, and it recently started hurting me alot, I've had to take motrin until I can get to the doctor January when I have more insurance.  But guess what, the smell is back!  Could this be from a tooth infection?  My tooth hasn't even been hurting any longer but the smell is getting worse.

[DoubleDose]

I have an observation that I think may be very IMPORTANT to many of us.  I also have had these phantom fumes and smells for over five months...and they have ranged from sickly sweet/ moldy to pungent chemical and diesel fuel/kerosene- like in odor.  Many times I have had these smells early upon waking , but the worst times have been middle of the night, where they would wake me up with a sickening start!  I had felt all along that we had mold issues in our HVAC, and over the months had an entirely new system installed, inside and out, with new ductwork, etc.  We even added the UV light, and had a major cleaning done...we are in an almost brand new home...   Guess what....the smell came back just as before.  About two weeks ago, doing research on these fumes and moldy sickening odors...I stumbled across several blogs and sites describing Phantosmia.  WOW!  A frightening realization slowly overcame me...that it has all been internal...and not external at all.  No one else ever smells the odors that I have complained about, of course.  So, the other night, to test my theory, I went to bed, and upon waking up early in the morning...checked to see if I could smell the "fumes"....  Slightly, but not overwhelming.  THEN, I made a slight depression in my pillow, and breathed into it four or five times without using my nose to breathe in...I then smelled the area slowly...and WOW!  Overpowering fumes there in the pillow...exactly of the same scent as the diesel and sickening sweet moldy smells I have had over many months.  

Here is my major take away from this  (and of course I did this little experiment about 20 times, to make sure the odor was coming OUT OF ME)........that we may not all be 'hallucinating odors' , or having some other worldly sensing type of wierd experience...but we may actually be smelling a very strange odor from our own breath!!!  Maybe coming from lungs...or abdominal/gastric areas, or sinuses.    I remember times my wife would occasionally have 'acetone' breath in the morning, and I would be amazed at how it smelled just like nail polish remover...exactly.  She could breathe at me, and it would be pure acetone. It only happened four or five times over the years. We looked it up and found this is common and is explained in medical literature as a known breath abberation.

So this leads me to this conclusion...we may ALSO be 'manufacturing' the odor that we frequently smell, and we may smell and percieve different versions of the odor, depending on our internal bodily conditions.  I do NOT know what may be producing the odor...but I do believe it is real...and we are highly sensitive to smelling it.  Try the pillow test next time you wake up to the nasty fumes.....breathe a bit of your own breath back in...and see if it is very strong and more intense.  I also had several moderate head bump situatiuons in the past year....sports related, which many claim can cause phantosmia....but I also have frequent sinus allergies  (not infection)...and this has also been implicated in the medical sites.   So, let's see if anyone else out there can determine whether their phantom smells and fumes are being 'imagined'/ hallucinated......OR rather being just plain produced by our bodies...and sensed very acutely when we breathe it in.  That is likely why it comes and goes randomly...depending on our day to day physical condition.  

I think that if people can develop 'acetone' breath, as my wife has in the past, and that itself is a very noxious smell....and is accepted as being caused by metabolic changes in an individual....then we may be producing a breath scent in a very similar manner.  We may just smell and taste our own noxious scent being produced for some unknown reason!!!!  The smell that I breathed into my pillow was the EXACT fume smell, times ten!!!  It comes from inside of ME!!!