Reference point
Stand beside a laser printer as it prints and smell the sheet that has just come out.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Warm, lightly scorched, with a plastic note and a strange sharp layer like the smell of electric welding.
That sharp layer is ozone, the same compound found in a metal workshop. It is one of the few places where an office and a metal workshop share a molecule.
The freshly printed sheet is still hot, and the smell is clearest at that moment. After a few minutes it is almost gone.
How to smell it
Take the sheet as it leaves the printer and smell the printed surface at once. Then smell a blank sheet from the same tray — the difference is entirely the toner and the heat.
Why this one is hard
Because it is the background smell of offices, and background smells are filtered out by the brain. You have to pick up the sheet deliberately to smell it.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Laser printer
Household objects family
Both have ozone. The printer adds notes of hot plastic and paper; welding is purely metallic and scorched.
Scientific note
A laser printer melts the toner powder with a fuser roller at around 200 degrees, making the resin in the toner give off volatile organic compounds. At the same time the highly charged photoconductor drum produces a small amount of ozone. Inkjet printers have neither process, so they smell completely different — mostly the solvent of water-based ink.
In Vietnamese life
The smell of printers goes with offices and copy shops, and in Vietnam the copy shops around universities are a space of their own with a very characteristic smell — toner, plus hot paper, plus binding glue.