George Preti studied bodily odors as biological clues
George Preti, an organic chemist who devoted his career to studying bodily odors and how they can be weaponized in detecting disease, died on March 3 in Hatboro, Pennsylvania. He was 75.
The cause was bladder cancer, according to the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a Philadelphia-based research institution funded by philanthropy, government grants and corporate sponsorships.
Ever since he was a regular passenger on the New York City subways, Preti (pronounced PRET-ee) had thrived on pungency, discovering how individual smells can distinguish human beings like fingerprints.
“We’re all little chemistry factories,” he told The New York Times in 1995. “We have bacteria mingling with excretions from the body that form a variety of odors depending on what part of the body we’re talking about.”
His studies of the chemistry and biology of human body odors examined in particular their potential for diagnosing disease. He collaborated with cancer specialists and animal behaviorists, for example, to train dogs to identify odor profiles of ovarian cancer from blood samples. By the time ovarian cancer is typically detected by a scan or by physical sensation, it has spread to other organs. Preti’s goal, which he was working toward at his death, was to perfect what would amount to an electronic nose.
Preti also delved into socalled volatile emanations like earwax; anal sac odors from dogs; scent marks from marmoset monkeys; the reek of urine from guinea pigs and mice; food smells from fruit flies; and the stench of swine slurry — a mixture of feces, urine, food and mud generated by mammoth hog farms.
Each study served a purpose. Animal secretions, for example, could generate clues about sexual attraction and socialization. Analyzing the composition of swine slurry helped lead to an industrial-strength deodorant.
Preti held a number of patents, including on a means of identifying specific diseases through human body odor.
Preti’s introduction to scents and sensibilities was more august.
His doctoral dissertation was titled “A Study of the Organic Compounds in the Lunar Crust and in Terrestrial Model Systems.” When he was granted his doctorate and accepted a fellowship at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in 1971, he discovered that the same gas chromatography and mass spectrometry used to analyze Moon dust (he kept a vial on his desk to impress visitors) could identify odorcausing chemicals, volatile organic compounds, molecules and isomers (molecules with the same chemical formula but different chemical structures).
He is survived by his wife, Kathleen (Egan) Preti; his son, Gregory; his daughter, Stephanie Ruscin; his sister, Christine Crockett; and three grandchildren.