10ofRods
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My partner has chemical sensitivities, especially to heavily perfumed things. We use baking soda and vinegar to clean most things. We already know vinegar is in play at this crime scene, there were photographs taken of a vinegar bottle in the laundry, a witness discussed it early on, can't recall which one.
That said, baking soda is great at absorbing odours. I just don't know that it would win in a fight against decomposition, when I generally have to apply handfuls of the stuff several times over a few days to deal with the odour of a pet accident on the carpet. We know Terry Rasmussen had success with perfumed kitty litter, but I think he used about twenty bags of the stuff, and he wasn't transporting his victim.
MOO
Oh, but the archaeological record disagrees although yes, it would have to be reapplied - usually in a thin solution and Egyptians mixed it with other things thought to speed drying. Egyptians used Natron (very chemically similar to baking soda, found naturally at various places around Africa, most especially Lake Natron) to preserve bodies from some degree of decomp for a ritual period of 40 days. Naturally, they did other things to the body to prepare it for the next step in mummification, but while they were going those things, they used Natron.
Natron is baking soda plus ordinary table salt, as used in the Egyptian recipe anyway.
I have posted a couple of links including one that talks about using regular baking soda to slow decomp (any desiccant will work; baking soda is a desiccant).
If you google the question of how to slow decomp or remove the smells of decomp, google will tell you that baking soda is a good idea:
Here's a typical google hit:
![www.advancedbio-treatment.com](/forums/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.advancedbio-treatment.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsuicide-cleanup-tampa.jpg&hash=c1b7722afbb2248291038a1dfcf0f0ec&return_error=1)
How Do You Remove Death or Decomposition Odor?
Find information on how to remove death or decomposition odor from your home. Learn about potential hazards and how to protect yourself.
![www.advancedbio-treatment.com](/forums/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.advancedbio-treatment.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fcropped-abt-32x32.jpg&hash=635dc514641ae294b206e9a2abe6cbaa&return_error=1)
The Egyptians knew this by around 3600 years ago (maybe earlier) and other ancient cultures did it as well
It's the reason that it works as a deodorizer (the carpet would have smelled of both blood and smoke - baking soda works well on both).
So far no testimony on its use on the carpet, probably because she thoroughly cleaned the carpet afterward (and couldn't get under the bed).
IOW, baking soda's deodorizing properties are due to the very fact that it 1) dries things out which inhibits bacteria, mold and fungal growth - things that people don't like the smell of and 2) therefore inhibits the decomp created by bacteriological processes in the body.
In some autopsies, the body is actually coated with a baking soda based spray (which, if that happens, would obliterate its prior use by a murderer - but it's common enough that I do wonder if the forensic pathologist would have thought to test for its presence first). Most of my texts on this subject are from 2012 or earlier (so a decade old), but handbooks for forensic pathologists do not consistently list "check for presence of baking soda on the body."
And here's another aspect: baking soda itself decomposes gradually in moist conditions (including high humidity). In reading the recipes for its use in pathology labs (to slow decomp on any animal under study), it only takes a thin solution of it to slow decomp - which, as I noted, Ancient Egyptians knew and it's not so difficult to find on the internet. So I await the results of the forensic examination of T's various devices and search engines, which surely they have.
So that can of Extreme Deodorizer (the Arm and Hammer brand has jasmine and citrus added as fragrance - just as the Egyptians added certain fragrant herbs to their mix, which was then smoothed in small amounts on the skin of the dead - if they were to become mummies).
IMO.