"rotten air" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
For example, you could write: "The damp, rotten air of the old basement made it difficult to breathe."
The rotten-smelling air in and around the Porter Ranch community will begin to clear when the well is permanently sealed.
I first smelled it about a month ago, a vague, almost indistinct smell on a Sunday morning, like something rotten in the air.
A woman dressed in black wailed over the body, as flies buzzed in air rotten with the stench of untended death.
He emits an unmistakable smell: "The Hutt's lardaceous body seemed to periodically release a greasy discharge, sending fresh waves of rotten stench" into the air.
The drains in our flat recently backed up so much that a load of fetid water sat in our sinks for two days before a plumber could fix it, and when I came home the place was solid with a rotten smell in the air, and before I could say anything about it my flatmate held up a single finger to it and immediately went: You.
I heard the sounds of pain and crying and the smoke in the air smelled like rotten eggs.
The air stinks of rotten eggs, sea birds feast on a smorgasbord of dead fish, and oxygen-poor waters send lobsters scurrying onto beaches.
The air was sour and rotten, even two floors up.
When she finally got back into her house, the food in the refrigerator was rotten and her lawn mower and air compressor had been taken.
The smell in the air can range from rotten eggs to burning paint.
