Something stinks in Delaware County. A burning smell has been permeating through some towns since late Monday night and local officials don’t know why.

The mystery smell forced many residents to start calling the county 911 dispatch center for answers. 

“We received calls all day starting at 7 a.m.” said Delaware County Emergency Services Director Tim Boyce.

“Actually I thought a house was on fire” said one man.

“I work in landscaping, so I’m just thinking it’s the lawn mower just regular burning smelling wood” added another man outside the Linwood Wawa store.

Folks flooded social media with complaints. 

“I smelled it in Broomall” posted on woman on Facebook. “I smelled it at work in Eddystone” wrote another poster.  One woman said “it smells like bug spray to me.”  Others thought the burning odor was a rerun of those Canadian Wildfires.

Some internet sleuths were even tracking the wind direction to figure it out.  South Media Fire Company were called to a home in Rose Valley for “odor of burnt plastic in the area”, according to radio dispatch reports. But so far there has been no official explanation of that stink.

“Couldn’t define where it was coming from” said Boyce in a message to FOX 29.

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Locals speculated the smells were coming from industrial stacks near the Chester or Marcus Hook, but with the reports coming in from as far away as Villanova to New Jersey some who live nearby say it was definitely something else.

“You got the funky smell that went all the way to the east side” said one man walking along the banks of the Delaware River in Chester.

FOX 29 reached out to the Delaware County Health Department, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and several local fire companies but there are few answers. 

Despite the mystery, officials say there should be no cause for concern, but the funky smell certainly had people talking and wondering.

“They always burning stuff behind the woods. You never know what’s going on.. Somebody probably trying to hide something they don’t want seen” joked one man.

As of Tuesday evening, it seemed the burning smell had dissipated. 

If you have an air quality emergency, the DEP maintains a 24-hour Emergency Response Hotline at 1-800-541-2050.