This question is a follow on from this deleted one: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/177894/26076 as I was writing what I thought to be a valid physics answer to it. Version 1 of this question contained essentially this one: if a piece of furniture is smelly, does this not also mean it evaporates? The answer of course is that it does "evaporate", so the question then is "how long would we take to see this?" So I reworded this question to: how does one calculate the mass loss rate through outgassing from a smelly object?