hands smell like metal

Metallic Smell on Body or Breath: Causes & TreatmentThis page has been archived and is no longer updated Published online 25 October 2006 Silence Nature Silence doi:10.1038/news061023-7 NewsA 'metallic' smell is just body odor The sponge of iron or copper management comes from its own skin. Philip Ball Why does the metal smell? Chemicals have found a surprising answer: it does not. After you have grabbed an iron rail, a door handle or a piece of steel bark, your hand often leaves aside what seems to be a metal odor. But Dietmar Glindemann of the University of Leipzig, Germany, and his coworkers say you're not smelling the metal at all. They have found that the smell of must comes from chemical compounds in their skin, which are transformed in an instant by the touch of iron. They report the results in the international edition of Angewandte Chemie. Copper has a similar effect, counting the metal odor created by manipulating coins made from copper alloys. "When a merchant gives you a coin," says Glindemann, "you're smelling his body. "The smelly reactions induced by these metals create "the sensory illusion that it is the 'metal itself' that we smell right after touching it," the researchers say. In other words, a 'metallic' smell is only considered by association. "When a merchant gives you a coin, you are smelling your body smell."Dietmar Glindemann, University of LeipzigGlindemann began studying this question years ago when he was curious about the metallic garlic aroma after it was touched by a sweat palm. He found that naturally present acids in the sweat induce reactions between the impurities of carbon and phosphorus typically present in iron, generating volatile olympic molecules called organodines. But the 'metallic' odor left in your hands after handling iron or copper was different from the smell of acid-touched metals in the lab. "This problem tortured me for five or six years," says Glindemann. The advance came when he joined with environmental chemistry Andrea Dietrich at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the Blacksburg State University. She was trying to understand why people often complain of metallic taste in drinking water. Exploring the topic of metallic taste led her to think of the metallic smell. That led her to Glindemann, and they broke the problem together. The researchers captured the vapors emitted by the skin of people who had handled iron objects, and studied their chemical composition. The gases contained several compounds called aldehydes and ketones, which often have strong and distinctive smells. The smell of preserving liquid, or formaldehyde, makes for the characteristic reek of the ancient anatomy laboratories, for example, while the ketone acetone makes the distinctive solvent smoothie of the nail disassembler. These compounds are produced by rapid reactions between iron or copper and oils in our skin. Is that fungi? One of these compounds in particular, called 1-octen-3-one, which is found in the vapors on the skin touched by the iron, is particularly olide. Humans can detect it at very low concentrations, and experience it as a metal scent similar to mushrooms. ADVERTISEMENT Researchers believe that each person generates a subtlely different mixture of odorant molecules when they touch the metal, and that this mixture can change if the individual has a disease like cancer. So the analysis of chemicals in "iron pain," for example, could provide a kind of medical diagnostic tool. "Now we are working to see if the smell caused by iron on the skin provides a fingerprint of the disease," says Glindemann. Reactions could also explain Dietrich's question about why drinking water sometimes tastes metallic: organic food particles might be reacting with oxidation in the water to help form odor compounds. Visit us to read and publish comments about this story. Visit us to read and publish comments about this story. University of LeipzigReferences Stories by subject This article in other parts Resources

How do I get rid of that raw metal smell? How do I get rid of that raw metal smell? Hey, do you know that raw metal smell you put into your hands when you go to a meter and buy a sandwich but you accidentally touch your 'form a line here' pole? That's how my aluminum spinner smells... any suggestions? He had the same problem with a spinner he had ordered. While he was cleaning the bearing, though (he could not easily remove the bearing) the smell went away. Hot water and soap. The white vinegar must work. You can clean it up or just use it and it's going slowly. That smell is the result of a fairly simple and common chemical reaction. Certain metals like bronze contain copper that works as a powerful catalyst to decompose oils into their hands. The smell is not of the spindle, it's from YOU. The more you know...

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