The chemistry of b.o

Natural History, March, 2007 by Stephan Reebs

Everyone has a special smell, often recognizable to other people and to dogs. New research, the most comprehensive study of human odor to date, shows that body odor is made Up of a diverse array of volatile compounds. One's own distinctive scent, moreover, comes from a personalized blend of those chemicals.

A team led by Dustin J. Penn, an evolutionary and behavioral ecologist at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Ethology in Vienna, collected samples of saliva, armpit sweat, and urine from nearly 200 people living in an Austrian village. Sweat, the team discovered, includes the greatest number of volatile compounds; the team counted 373 such compounds that subjects consistently produced throughout the ten-week study.

Each person produced his or her own subset of the corn pounds. The subsets overlapped, yet individuals were readily distinguishable. Unsurprisingy perhaps, men and 'women tended to produce different mixtures--though no single compound differentiated the sexes. The study provides a new method for measuring a person's baseline odor. Because body odor can change with the onset of illness, the method could lead to new ways of diagnosing disease. (Journal of the Royal Society Interface).