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Old people just smell. It’s not mean or ageist to say, it’s a chemical fact. Aging humans share this detectable change in odor with many other animals, including mice, deer, rabbits, otters, owls and monkeys.

While part of this scent is scientifically attributable to the oily secretions of the apocrine glands, I think we all know there’s a separate, cultural factor at play here, too.

What’s with old people and mothballs?

Do you routinely find ravenous little red-eyed moths in your closet? Yeah, me neither. And I sure as Sheldon don’t use mothballs.

But you know what else you probably don’t do? Wear the same wool shirt or darned socks for a hundred years. Or pack clothes away for the “changing of the seasons.”

Face it: old people have their shit together. And when moths tried to take advantage of that by eating their digs, those geezers distilled a sublimating poison to kill ‘em where they stand.

Because that’s what the Great Generation gave us, a world free of pests. You might show a little respect. (And try to ignore the fact they also handed us a world full of poisons.)

What are mothballs?

Mothballs used to be made out naphthalene, an aromatic hydrocarbon distilled out of coal tar.

This was back in your grandpap’s day or as he’d say, “Back when we used to make things in this country.” And you’d ask, “Out of coal tar?” And he’d say, “You bet yer ass. We used every part of those fossilized dinosaurs, just like the Injuns.” And you’d say, “I don’t think coal is made from dinosaurs and also, Grandpap, ‘Injun’ is not the preferred nomenclature…” and he’d interrupt you screaming, “Ah, what-do-you-know-about-it?! Fetch me some more mothballs!”

Naphthalene

Remember when I said naphthalene sublimated? This means it goes straight from a solid to a vapor, and that vapor is toxic to moths and their caterpillars. Mothballs are meant to be used in closed containers, where the naphthalene can sublimate and displace oxygen. So in a Tupperware box, the gas will push through all the nooks and crannies of your granny’s woolens and assassinate any burrowing babushka bugs. 

Unfortunately, if you can smell the mothball – detectable in the air at just a few parts per billion by the human nose – that means you’re also inhaling the same noxious gas the CDC says can cause a whole slew of nastiness, including:

“Headache, confusion, excitement, malaise (vague feeling of discomfort); nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain; irritation bladder; profuse sweating; jaundice; hematuria (blood in the urine), renal shutdown; dermatitis, optical neuritis, corneal damage.”

It also causes cancer in rats. But neither of these are the reason mothball makers switched from naphthalene to paradichlorobenzene. Heavens no! It’s because naphthalene has a tendency to burst into flame when moderately heated. Its vapor is also highly flammable. Oh, and naphthalene dust is used in freaking explosives.   

 

Paradichlorobenzene – the safer moth killer

Today, paradichlorobenzene is the moth killer of choice. For our purposes, it’s pretty much the same as naphthalene – minus the fire hazard. Though it does have the additional benefits of killing molds and mildews and being used in urinal deodorants.

Less popularly, you’ll see paradichlorobenzene called “moth flakes” or “moth crystals.”

Still, the National Pesticide Information Center warns moth flakes can cause everything from nausea, dizziness and headaches to burning sensations on the skin. They may also cause kidney and liver damage in pets, which brings up an important point.

Mothballs kill moths. Not snakes. Not skunks.

So don’t go putting them in your yard like a jag-off.

Though it should be noted, when researchers fed 10 ducks a bit of paradichlorobenzene for 35 days, three of them died. The rest suffered from stunted growth. (Not saying mothballs should be used as duck repellent. But. If you happened to have an attic full of ducks…)

Mothball Alternatives

An alternative to explosive stinkballs? I know, grandpa would be appalled.

But there are alternatives. Storing your sweaters in a cedar chest will help, since cedar oil is a natural repellant. You could also run your woolens through a warm dryer to kill the eggs or perform a series of freeze and thaw maneuvers, culminating in a mad dash to seal your clothes in an air-tight container before they are descended upon by hordes of common clothes moths (Tineola bisselliella), Ride of the Valkyries style.

(Choose your own Wagner adventure! Apocalypse Now or Hummingbirds?)

 

Wait a minute

We established pretty early on that I don’t suffer from moths, despite the absence of any moth balls, flakes or crystals in my home. So I’m asking you, are mothballs still necessary? Might the next generation of elderly escape this sour scent of aging? Or did I just waste a lot of our time writing about an antiquated pesticide?

But hey, that fireball was pretty cool, right?

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*Bittel Me Bonus

1. Of course, Grandpa was all kinds of wrong. Naphthalene was first extracted from coal tar by a British chemist and geologist, not an American. His name was John Kidd.

2. By and large, the organic materials that created today’s fossil fuels were in place millions of years before the dinosaurs even existed. Even the government says so. And they’d never lie to us when it comes to dinosaurs.

3. Right?

 

 

Images: Cartoon moth, clothes moth