Usually, if there is a smell in your home, it isn't that big of a deal and can just be attributed to what you ate for dinner or your pet or perfume you're wearing or if you took your trash out or some other factor. However, if your place smells a little fishy, literally, and you haven't been cooking seafood, you might be in a lot of danger.
Many residents assume the fishy smell is sewage or that an animal died in their walls, but sewage has a sulfuric or egg smell and a dead animal gives off more of a rotting odor. What's actually happening when a home smells fishy is that the odor is coming from overheating electrical outlets. The outlets, and other electrical components like circuit breakers and wires, are made using heat-resistant chemicals. When those heat-resistant chemicals get too hot, they melt and release a strange, fishy odor.
The overheating can be caused by loose wires, frayed cords, overloaded circuits or a bunch of other reasons, so if there is a fish smell in your home, you'll want to not waste any time in calling an electrician to find the source of it and repair it. The longer an electrical component overheats, the more likely it is to cause a potentially devastating fire.