Puberty makes teens smell of goats, peppers and cheese

PUBERTY makes teenagers smell of urine, goats, cheese, peppers and wax, a study has found.

The room of a teenager is a notoriously stinky place as a cocktail of poor hygiene, rebellion and swirling hormones creates an unpleasant stench.

Now, scientists in Germany have discovered two specific chemicals unique to teenage scent which are made by the activation of sweat and sebum glands as children get hairier during the transition from child to adult.

Two steroids, 5alpha-and-rost-16-en3-one and 5alpha-and-rost-16-en-3alpha-ol, were found exclusively in the body odour from teenagers and these chemicals have a smell similar to sweat, urine, musk and sandalwood.

Researchers at the aroma and smell research facility of the Friedrich-alexander-universität Erlangen-nürnberg (FAU) analysed sweat from cotton wool pads woven into the armpits of clothes worn overnight by 36 participants.

Half were infants under three years old and the other 18 were aged 14 to 18. The pads were worn for one night and parents and participants avoided strongly flavoured foods, perfumed products and detergents for 48 hours before the study.

The teenagers also had elevated levels of six carboxylic acids which smell of goat, cheese, peppers and wax, the experts say.

Lab analysis and professional smellers identified the differences between the cohorts.

“We used gas chromatography-olfactometry to determine which of the detected volatiles are odour-active,” study author Dr Helene Loos told The Telegraph.

“This technique uses the human nose as a detector: a trained panellist is evaluating the smell qualities of the unknown odorants.

“The change in smell is due to the onset of activity of apocrine sweat glands,” she added.

The study is published in Communications Chemistry.