Word: odorless
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Nature could hardly have created anything that seems more innocuous. An invisible and odorless gas, carbon dioxide is a simple molecular linkup of just a single atom of carbon and two atoms of oxygen (CO2). It constitutes a mere fraction of the atmosphere (.03% vs. about 78% for nitrogen and 20% for oxygen) but becomes dangerous to man and other air-breathing creatures when it accumulates in concentrations higher than 10% as, say, at the bottom of deep wells or mine shafts...
...chemical that most efficiently killed the poppies was an acid known as 2.4-D. The best marijuana spray was a more toxic salt, paraquat, developed by Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries; it is a poison that becomes tasteless, odorless and colorless after it is sprayed on crops. As little as one-tenth of an ounce of paraquat can kill humans who swallow it. Lesser amounts can cause scarring of the lungs, which can lead to an irreversible condition called pulmonary fibrosis. The herbicide can also cause lung hemorrhaging and vomiting...
...compounds have been accumulating in the environment for more than 45 years. In commercial production since 1929, the colorless, odorless, syrupy PCBs were once widely used in industry as softeners in plastics, paints and rubber, as additives in printing inks, and in oils used in the preparation of laboratory slides...
...disasters that could be caused by a severe earthquake, perhaps none is so frightening as the destruction of a nuclear power plant. Ruptured by the heaving of the once solid ground, it would release radioactive particles into the air. There, they could form a colorless, odorless cloud that would contaminate everything in its path, poisoning the land, killing some people, causing cancer in others...
Post-Watergate morality has turned into mortality: this colorless, odorless cure-all "morality" is supposed to excuse the mortality of those events themselves. The overkill in the media has led to a numbing of the spirit. Nobody cares about Watergate enough to listen to all of the boring details again, and yet the record companies still exploit that tragi-comedy...