Teenagers smell of goats, cheese and urine – and now scientists know exactly why

Scientists think they have discovered two scents unique to teenage smell. Photo / Getty

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

A teenager’s room is a notoriously stinky place as a cocktail of poor hygiene and swirling hormones creates an unpleasant stench.

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

Two steroids, 5α-androst-16-en-3-one and 5α-androst-16-en-3α-ol, were found exclusively in the body odour from teenagers. 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 3 and the other 18 were adolescents 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.

A whiff of wax

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 infants had higher levels of α-isomethylionone, a ketone which is known to smell of violets. There was also an unknown chemical that an expert said smelt “soap and perfume-like”.

Microbes on the skin

However, they warn it is possible this is a leftover smell from some baby-scented products and probably not made by the babies themselves.

Puberty, hair growth, microbes on the skin and sweat all play a role in creating the unpleasant aroma of teenagers, the scientists believe.

“The change in smell is due to the onset of activity of apocrine sweat glands,” Dr Loos explained.

The study is published in Communications Chemistry.