Cabbage-based stink bomb sickens shoppers in Russian department store

Seventy-eight people went to the hospital after being exposed to a stink bomb set off in a St. Petersburg department store. Officials think the bomb, which consisted of glass vials containing rotten-cabbage-scented methyl mercaptan, was planted by a competing department store.

Employees at the branch where people were sickened said they heard a noise like a clap or pop before people smelled a garlicky odour and began to feel ill. Police called to the scene found a mechanism with a timer attached to shattered ampoules, and patients complained of nausea and vomiting, Stepchenko said.

He said a custodian at another branch discovered a suspicious box before opening time and found ampoules attached to wires and a timer inside. The woman inadvertently broke one of the ampoules and noticed a repulsive smell but was not sickened, he said.

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Reader comment: Robert says: "Methyl mercaptan smells like, but does not come from, rotten cabbage.

"Calling it 'rotten-cabbage-scented' is a little more accurate, but suggests that the scent was added after the fact, while in actuality, stench is a property of the mercaptan itself.

"In case you weren't aware, methyl mercaptan is commonly used as an odorant in natural gas, the better to detect leaks at very low concentrations."