Skunk Smell: How Long Does Skunk Spray Last and How to Get It Out? (2024)

FAQs

How do you get skunk spray smell out of you? ›

Wash your entire body with deodorant soap or a grease-cutting dish detergent. Wash your hair with a shampoo made for oily hair. You can also soak in a baking-soda bath for 15 to 20 minutes: Pour 2 to 4 cups of baking soda into hot water.

A mild skunk smell in your house can last up to three weeks, dissipating over time with proper ventilation. However, if you leave stronger smells untreated, they can last for months or years, becoming more difficult to remove the longer they sit.

2. How long does it take for skunk odor to go away on its own? If left untreated, the smell of a skunk can last anywhere from days, to two weeks, to a month (depending upon circ*mstances).

Home: Open windows, run fans, and ventilate well. Place a bowl of vinegar in each affected room for at least 24 hours. Or, boil vinegar in a pan. The room will smell like stinky vinegar, but it takes the skunk odor once that smell is gone.

1 teaspoon of liquid soap (we have found dawn dish soap to work the best)

Put bowls of white vinegar in each room for a few days. The vinegar will sit and absorb the skunk odor molecules floating about and neutralize it. You can speed up the process a bit through boiling vinegar. Put a pot of white vinegar on the stove and boil for an hour.

Breathing it in can irritate the lungs. The odor has the potential to worsen asthma symptoms, but this is quite rare. The smell can be nauseating. While skunk spray is best classified as an irritant, rare but important effects have been described in dogs.

Tomato juice does not make skunk odor go away. More specifically, tomato juice does not react chemically with the skunk odor to destroy it. Instead, it simply has a strong enough smell on its own to partially mask the skunk smell. But in this respect, it is no different from any other strong odor.

Try Using White Vinegar

Depending on the size of the room where the odor is strongest, pour 1-3 cups of vinegar into a good-size bowl and place it in a safe spot in the "stinky" room where it can't be knocked over. Then, open windows in the room, and shut any doors to other rooms.

Chemist Paul Krebaum discovered a solution that changes the odorous thiols into odorless acids, thereby chemically neutralizing the skunk odor. The formula is: 1 quart of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide (fresh bottle), • ¼ cup of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), and • 1-2 teaspoons of liquid dish soap.

How many times can 1 skunk spray? ›

Skunks hold enough odorous liquid to spray 5 or 6 times before needing to replenish; glands take 8 to 10 days to refill. Contrary to the old myth, tomato juice isn't the most effective way to get rid of the stench of skunk spray – it just masks the smell.

How does the skunk smell get into your house? A skunk spray outdoors near the HVAC system will seep throughout the system and get into your home. A pet dog playing around the porch or garden can get sprayed by skunks and get the smell into the house or worse on your linen.

Removing odors from the air

Skunk odor can be quite persistent, and you may find that it is still lingering. One recommendation that we have found works extremely well is to place bowls of white vinegar periodically through the affected area and let them sit for a day or two.

You'll need several bottles of ReaLemon lemon juice to wash down your body or your pet, but the acids in lemon juice eliminate skunk odor—reportedly better than tomato juice.

Pour vinegar into a saucepan, bring to a light boil on the stove, turn down heat and let simmer for 2 hours or until reduced by 3/4. Open windows and/or turn on ventilation. When the vinegar smell dissipates, after 2 to 3 hours, the skunk smell should be gone. A faint vinegar smell may remain for several days.

Skunks spray to repel potential predators with a foul-smelling, oily secretion stored in their perianal glands. For humans, it usually does not result in much more than short-term irritation. In dogs, in addition to irritation it can rarely cause a more serious condition in which the red blood cells are destroyed.

Ocular edema, conjunctivitis, drooling, and squinting are commonly noted in animals that have been sprayed. Many dogs will rub their faces, roll, sneeze, and vomit. Temporary blindness may occur. Exposure to skunk spray can be oral, dermal, ocular, and respiratory.

In the case of skunk spray, when this happens, the smell of tomato juice is easily detected and it appears that the skunk odor is gone. While bathing an animal with tomato juice might wash off some of the chemical components causing the odor, it does nothing to chemically alter or neutralize the odor.

Be sure to use dishwasher soap in the shower. The degreaser will help remove the smell from your skin. Both my husband and I used Dawn dish soap and it worked perfectly. 3) If your dog still has a skunky smell on them after an outdoor bath (which will probably happen), I suggest using a skunk shampoo.