ShareThisA nose is a nose is a nose.
Until it's not working anymore.
For David Agostino of South Fayette, Penn., outside Pittsburgh, a 2004 motorcycle accident cost him not only his sense of smell but his job.
A state appeals court ruled last week that Collier Township police could legally dismiss him from the force because, without being able to smell,, he might not be able to detect drugs, alcohol or hazardous materials.
The partial or complete absence of a sense of smell -- called anosmia -- is far less apparent than other sensory conditions, such as deafness or blindness. But the condition, thought to affect millions of Americans, brings its own set of challenges.
It's unusual that anosmia would actually affect job prospects, said Beverly Cowart, director of the Monell-Jefferson Taste & Smell Clinic in Philadelphia, though she has heard of firefighters losing their jobs. She once had a patient who could no longer continue as a truck driver transporting flammable materials. "Of course, people who are chefs have problems as well," she said.
The U.S. armed forces also list anosmia as a "disqualifying medical condition."
Though Agostino lost his sense of smell through an accident involving head trauma, the condition is actually more common in women and more common after a cold, said Richard Doty, director of the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
"The typical patient is a 43-year-old woman who has a cold, gets over the cold and finds that food tastes like cardboard," he said.
A cold -- or more serious conditions, like nasal polyps or chronic sinusitis -- can damage olfactory nerve cells, Cowart said. Sometimes the loss of smell is permanent and sometimes the nerves regenerate over a period of months or years.
In some cases, anosmia can also result from a congenital defect or a genetic condition, she said.
And like other senses, smell tends to diminish as people get older. According to one study, almost 25 percent of the population over age 50 had impaired olfactory perception, Cowart said. In 80- and 90-year-olds, that figure increased to 63 percent.
The most obvious daily effect of anosmia is its effect on food flavor perception, Cowart said. Though the taste buds on the tongue enable people to distinguish between sweet, salty, bitter and sour, more subtle taste differences depend on a sense of smell, she said.
"They can't tell the difference between strawberry, vanilla and chocolate," she said, because all three taste sweet. "Aromatic herbs are just lost."
Dane Summerville of Weirton, W.Va., lost his sense of smell as a 3-year-old after falling down a flight of stairs. He said that doctors have told him that he can only taste about 10 percent of what the average person can.
"I'll eat pork and think it's chicken," he said. "I like things that are strong. I love buttermilk -- I can live on buttermilk."
(E-mail Anya Sostek at asostek(at)post-gazette.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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