THE vexed question of why some brand-new carpets smell of cat urine, even in
feline-free households, has been answered.
Last year, a carpet manufacturer approached Jodi Martin of the Calgon
Corporation in Pittsburgh, saying that customers were complaining that their new
carpets smelled of cat urine. “It’s something that pops up occasionally,” says
Ken McIntosh of the Carpet and Rug Institute, in Dalton, Georgia.
Martin obtained samples of carpet, some with and some without the offending
odour. They couldn’t find any chemicals used to make the carpet that would
account for the smell, so they isolated bacteria from the samples…
