How or why does baking soda absorb odors?

Does baking soda really absorb odors?

• Answer:

  I tried it last year when I moved to a new apartment, the refrigerator there smelled really bad. I used different stuff like charcoal (although I did not try activated charcoal), special type of wood and finally baking soda. Baking soda was able to remove most of the smell from the refrigerator but it wasn't effective in removing odors from the freezer. I ended up changing the whole refrigerator because the smell was so bad it affected anything I put in the freezer. Baking soda will absorb orders (sodium bicarbonate can remove odors by neutralizing volatile sulfur compounds, that’s one of the reasons why we use it quite often in dentistry), but not to the extent that it will remove every single trace. Best thing IMO is to probably use a combination of baking soda and activated charcoal (activated charcoal is extremely porous and thus to have a very large surface area available for adsorption, you can check it out here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activated_carbon).