Talk:Methanethiol

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is this the same as the mercaptan that is added to gas for the smell? -- Tarquin 19:39 7 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, it is. It also seems to appear naturally in some forms of natural gas. I'm a little concerned about this paragraph: Methanethiol is released from decaying organic matter in marshes and is present in the natural gas of certain regions in the United States, in coal tar, and in some crude oils. It suggests that the product that is piped to your house has natural methanethiol. It might home some, but the smell of natural gas product is usually because of methanethiol additives. --Mdwyer 19:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Moving 2 why it smells bad to humans? 3 Chlorides 4 Asparagus

[edit] Moving

I was asked for comment on a motion to move this article to methanethiol. I would oppose this move. Although methanethiol is the IUPAC name of the chemical, methyl mercaptan is, in my experience, the more commonly-used name (although I wouldn't claim that either one is universally used). The situation is somewhat similar to chloroform; while trichloromethane its IUPAC name, it is much more broadly called chloroform.

"Chloroform" has more or less entered common usage, which is why it should be at chloroform. "Methyl mercaptan" has not; it exists primarily in the vocabulary of (old) chemists and people working in the petroleum industry and thus, should be at methanethiol.

Note also that several articles link here, while few link to methanethiol. Aerion//talk 19:33, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Only seven pages link here, and I would be more than happy to fix them if/when the page is moved. Methyl mercaptan would still function as a redirect should anyone use it in the future.

Darrien 01:27, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

"Mercaptan" is in somewhat common usage (unlike thiol), but I not so sure "methyl mercaptan" is. Mercaptan already redirects to thiol. (I abstain on the move) -R. S. Shaw 02:58, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A simple Google test shows 13,900 results for Methanethiol and 40,000 for Methyl mercaptan. Based on that and no other knowledge of the subject I'm going to oppose the move. violet/riga (t) 09:16, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Funny, I get 12,500 for methanethiol and 19,100 for methyl mercaptan. Are you sure you're using google correctly?

Darrien 10:43, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

I suppose using a phrase search on Methyl mercaptan makes it 20,000 – closer but still a majority. violet/riga (t) 10:57, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A phrase search is the only thing that matters. Without it you could have returned a page that said "...methanethiol consists of a methyl group covalently bonded to a sulfhydryl group. This class of compounds used to be known as mercaptans..." thus artificially inflating your page hits. Which certainly looks likes what happened, given that searching for the exact phrase cut your number in half.

Interestingly, thiol returns 470,000 pages, while mercaptan returns only 65,300. Considering that, along with the fact that mercaptan redirects to thiol, there shouldn't have even been a discussion on this. "Thiol" is much more common than "mercaptan", and "-thiol" is the naming method used by the IUPAC.

Darrien 05:40, 2005 Apr 8 (UTC)

I would support the move. Methyl mercaptan is in fact very familiar to me- I worked with it for years in industry, and recall many occasions after work when someone would say, "Can you smell gas?" I agree that methyl mercaptan as a name is in wide usage, but so is methanethiol. All modern organic textbooks teach about "thiols", and I notice that in my own PhD dissertation on organosulfur chemistry I use names such as ethanethiol right alongside traditional names such as p-cresol and hydroxycoumarin. I am certainly not a IUPAC hardliner- I recently turned a Sodium tetrahydridoborate(III) stub into a redirect to sodium borohydride, for example, but I think in the case of MeSH the IUPAC name is well-established. Even though it perhaps less common, it is well-known, and my understanding is that on Wikipedia the default is for a IUPAC name unless this is obscure (like trichloromethane). Therefore I vote in favor of the move. Walkerma 13:02, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This article has been renamed as the result of a move request. violet/riga (t) 12:26, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] why it smells bad to humans?

Is there a biological or evolutionary reason why it smells so disgusting to humans? Do we have a special hard-wired centre to react to it? Are there animals who also find it disgusting, or some who find it smells nice? etc. I would love to see the article expanded in this direction.--Sonjaaa 19:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

• Although as a student of evolutionary psychology, I never studied the evolution of specific reactions to scents as an psychological mechanism, I would suggest that given that this is the scent of certain rotten vegetables as well as eggs, which have the potential to cause harm to someone who consumes them, our negative reaction to methanethiol is adaptive. If someone has a source, they could add something to this effect to the article. QuinnHK 22:55, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chlorides

Hello,

I understand that Methanethiol can be neutralised with weak hypochlorite solutions, but does anyone know a source for this? 129.78.208.4 03:45, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Asparagus

I removed the block below for being unencyclopedic. However, it is good information that could be added back in if it was reworked. --Mdwyer 05:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Want to smell methanethiol for yourself? Just serve a meal to a group of friends/family and make sure you include some asparagus in the ingredients.

One of the byproducts of digesting asparagus is methanethiol, which is rapidly expressed in urine in levels high enough to be clearly noticeable. So why test a group of people and not just yourself? Well, the expression of methanethiol is a common (but not universal) genetic trait which you may not have, and the ability to smell mercaptan may also be genetically linked. Eau D'Asparagus