I doubt that. Explosives are hard to come by. If you can get the material you don't need to make a pipe bomb to commit suicide.
Gunpowder isn't hard to come by, and that's the smell reported in the area. As I understand it, gunpowder is a very common fuel for pipe bombs....
As to how a person decides on what method to use to commit suicide .... I'm not sure there's a sure-fire way to predict such things.