What does ammonia smell like?

Do that carefully though! When smelling a chemical, always use your hand to waft it toward your nose, never put your nose down and sniff.* Anyway, if you do that with a few cleaning products you should be able to pretty easily isolate the smell of ammonia, it's strong. read more

It smells like ammonia, and it's eye watering. I guess fishy is an okay way to describe it, although I wouldn't pin it as that (and I've smelled plenty of bad fish in my time). Personally my mental association is with cleaning products, which frequently contain ammonia. read more

A reader asked me to address the issue of ammonia smell when working out. Many of us have experienced this - especially during prolonged cardiovascular exercise. Your sweat has an acrid, ammonia-like smell. read more