"Maybe occasionally you get bad smells, but it was never this constant, six weeks of this now," said Don Duggan, who's lived in the apartment community for seniors since it opened in 2007. "You can smell it walking the hallway."
The mysterious odor - a potent mix of sulfur and rotten eggs - hits the nose at the intersection of Quincy Shore Drive and East Squantum Street. The city has hired chemists from UMass Boston to test water samples for the presence of any bacteria that could contain clues about the smell's origin.
"The city immediately took bacteria samples to see if it was sewage; those tests came back negative," city spokesman Christopher Walker said. "But we're still waiting to determine exactly what it is."
Walker said preliminary indications are that the smell is linked to a naturally-occurring phenomenon, perhaps red algae.
"Unfortunately, it appears to be something at this point that's occurring in nature and doesn't have an immediate remedy, other than waiting for nature to run its course," he said.
The lab tests are expected back next week.
Ward 6 City Councilor Brian McNamee said in a newsletter he sent to constituents this week that tests had linked the odor to red tide, a condition caused by naturally occurring algae that produce a toxin shellfish absorb as they feed.
McNamee cited a conversation with mayoral aide James Fatseas in the newsletter, but said there is now less certainty than there was at the time about the cause.
"I've heard so many stories," he said. "I don't think (officials), because it's a periodic problem, have ever exhibited the will power to drill down on it completely. It's been a issue for a good month now."
The state Division of Marine Fisheries has not issued a red tide alert for Quincy, which it does to warn people to avoid eating clams and mussels from affected areas.
"It may be some other type of algae," said Reggie Zimmerman, a spokesman for the state agency that oversees marine fisheries. "The way red tide typically happens, it would hit the North Shore first before it got all the way down to Quincy."
Anamarija Frankic, a UMass Boston environment professor and Squantum resident, said the smell is clearly abnormal and not part of the normal processes of salt marshes.
"It's never this horrible smell that we've been smelling the last couple of weeks," she said. "Nature has that sometimes little bit higher sulfur smell ... but this smells like poop, I'm sorry."
Longtime Quincy clam digger Neil Malick said clams from the area recently were showing signs of a virus, and guessed that the smell is coming from dead shellfish.
"You're getting that decomposing sulfur smell," he said. "It doesn't smell like feces or anything."
There is a Massachusetts Water Resources Authority sewer pipe in the water that carries waste from Squantum to the Fenno Street area. Officials said the MWRA has checked their mains and found no issues.
For all the mixed signals about the cause, resident Peg Buchanan knows one thing for certain about the smell.
"It's unbearable," she said.
Just something to think about. The emissions from a volcano smell like sulfur and rotten eggs!!