To Salvador Dali, it was a ”sublime fragrance compounded of heliotrope and lamb.” A 19th Century novelist called it a ”rough odor which has something of the relish of wild duck cooked with olives … and a faint whiff of overripe peaches.” The poet Catullus wrote of the ”fierce goat” beneath a man`s arms.
Linda Bishop is more prosaic: ”It`s just body smell, that`s all.”
Bishop is an odor judge at Hill Top Research, a Cincinnati-based company contracted by manufacturers to test, among other things, their products`
deodorant claims. To an odor judge, armpit smell is simply another ”mal”-
sniffers` lingo for malodor. Hill Top`s well-paid proboscises have sampled fumes off everything from wet carpets to dirty diapers (underarms rank midway).
I`m here for the underarm overview: Why they sweat, why they stink, how to make them stop. My introduction to the topic takes the form of 66 male armpits, which are lining up to be sniffed after spending the last 24 hours without soap or personal care product. This is the qualifying round on a test of a new antiperspirant deodorant. If a man doesn`t smell enough like a man, he is paid for his time and sent home.
No. 19 steps in front of Bishop. She nods and he raises his arms, like a toddler waiting to have a shirt pulled off. In this case, the shirt is already off. Bishop sniffs discreetly, cupping a hand to the side of her face as though whispering secrets to the man`s underarm.
”Thank you.” She steps back and marks an ”8” (10 being the most manly) on her score sheet.
Technically speaking
Science has a name for the fierce goat under No. 19`s arms: the apocrine sweat gland, aka the human scent gland. Around puberty, apocrine glands begin to secrete a pale milky goo. It`s a subtle ooze. You can`t see it, and you can`t smell it-not at first, anyway. Not until the bacteria under your arms have digested it. Within several hours, these one-celled dinner guests begin to excrete what scientists politely refer to as ”breakdown products”-which, like yours, mine and the cows` in the meadow, stink. It takes six hours at room temperature for apocrine secretions to develop a noticeable smell. As with any breakdown product, the longer it sits and the warmer the weather, the stronger the stench. (If you want to see someone grimace, ask Hill Top vice president John Wild about the mouthwash sniff-test involving incubated petri dishes of saliva and mouth bacteria.)
Our other sweat glands, the eccrine glands, are temperature regulators. When we start to overheat, they release a cooling cover of clear liquid. Though perspiration does develop a mild smell, its main contribution to armpit odor is that it creates the requisite damp in which underarm flora thrive.
A little one-on-one
While eccrine glands cover the body, from 1,000 to 2,000 per square inch of skin, apocrine glands are sparse-but not hard to find: Where there are patches of wiry body hair, there are apocrine glands, one per hair-in the underarms and the crotch. Some scientists theorize that the hair in these areas is a means of retaining and ”broadcasting” scent.
If that is so, Bishop is a woman of admirable tolerance. Her nose is currently casting about in a bristly thicket beneath a meaty bicep bearing the tattoo ”Arty.”
Molly Albrecht, the supervising judge, appears at my side. Albrecht is a petite, polite woman, whose silver hair and gold 20-year Hill Top pendant bespeak a long and respectable career in odors. ”Would you like to sniff?”
she says graciously, as though proffering a plate of hors d`oeuvres.
I glance down the line of torsos. Arty awaits, idly scratching his belly. I mumble something about not knowing how.
Albrecht hands me a score sheet. ”Smell each side twice,” she instructs. ”Little bunny sniffs.”
Arty approaches. He raises his right arm. I sniff his armpit. It`s like some strange intergalactic greeting on a planet I hope never to visit.
Arty is a relative rose. I`ve known worse from my own two pits. This comes as no surprise to the judges. They insist that gender, weight, body type and hairiness have little to do with underarm odor. They say it`s mainly body chemistry: how active your apocrine glands are, and what types of bacteria live in your armpits. Albert Kligman, University of Pennsylvania professor of dermatology and co-author of the journal article ”Perspectives on Axillary Odor,” agrees-except for the bit about gender.
Really aged B.O.
”Sure, there are some first-class women stinkers,” he says. ”But the apocrine gland is androgen-driven.” (Androgens are male hormones, though women have a dab of them, too.) ”Men have more androgen and bigger apocrine glands, and they stink more.” Unless they are Asian men. Asians have few apocrine glands. In Japan, B.0. is considered a medical problem-enough, in the past, to merit exemption from the military.
How an armpit smells also depends on who`s smelling it. Fifty percent of the population can`t smell one of B.O.`s most pungent breakdown components:
androstenone. I`m about to find out if I`m one of them. Hill Top keeps a supply of synthesized odors on hand for training judges. The ever-obliging John Wild is rummaging through the Hill Top refrigerator, a ghastly reeking jumble of bottled morning breath and test tubes of sweaty foot smell. At last he finds what he`s looking for. Carefully, he opens the box and unwraps a small glass vial.
”Androstenone, 1982,” he reads, with the hushed reverence of a wine steward. ”It`s old, but it maintains its pungency.”
So, it`s like perfume?
Depending on whom you talk to, the musky scent of androstenone has the power not only to offend, but also to arouse. In the 1970s and early 1980s, when the natural sex-attractant chemicals called pheromones were a popular topic among psychologists, and colognes had names like Musk, researchers were forever spraying waiting room chairs and movie seats with androstenone, hoping to lure unsuspecting females. One British psychologist had men and women don androstenone-scented surgical masks and judge photographs of people, animals and buildings. Compared to controls, the subjects rated people more attractive (and, oddly, buildings more sensitive). Among wild boars, which produce a pheromone chemically identical to human androstenone, a whiff causes females to ”bend over and present.”
With some trepidation, I sample Wild`s vial. Nothing. I`m one of the ones who can`t smell it.
A partial remedy
Research has also unseated androstenone as B.O.`s prime offender, which it was once thought to be. In 1989, George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia isolated 3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid, now widely regarded among sensory chemists as the quintessence of human armpit odor. (Preti sent Hill Top a sample, which Wild keeps in a vial-inside a jar, inside a sealed plastic bag-marked ”diluted body odor.” One five-minute unveiling left Wild`s office smelling like a high school locker room.)
How to combat 3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid, you ask? You`ve got two choices:
deodorant or antiperspirant deodorant. The first, whether it`s a soap or an underarm preparation, works by killing bacteria. (This may change: Monell has applied for a patent on a new type of deodorant. Instead of offing underarm bacteria, it prevents them from digesting secretions by providing them with alternate fare.) Usually a deodorant is scented, partly to mask odors, but mainly because personal care product sales are ”fragrance-driven”-p eople choose them by the scent.
Deodorant alone won`t keep you dry. For that, you need an antiperspirant- deodorant, as most of them are now called. Antiperspirants earn the right to call themselves deodorants because their active ingredients, like those in a deodorant, kill bacteria-and because they make armpits a drier, less hospitable place for bacteria.
For women only
I ask Wild how antiperspirants keep you dry. He escorts me downstairs to the Antiperspirancy Department ”hot room”: a computer-controlled microcosm of Cincinnati in August. We peer through a one-way mirror at a group of women recruited to test a new antiperspirant. Seated in rows of folding chairs and draped in maroon towel-ponchos, they look like graduating seniors-and are doing what most people do at graduation ceremonies: sitting politely and sweating. When the timer rings, the cotton pads under the women`s arms will be collected and weighed. This is called a ”thermal collection.” There are also ”emotional collections”: To test products against nervous perspiration, panelists are forced to give speeches and discuss controversial issues, such as ”religion and Pete Rose.”
Good and bad points
Without antiperspirant, the average armpit releases 400 to 500 milligrams of sweat after 20 minutes at 100 degrees Fahrenheit. (The Hill Top record is 3,079 milligrams.) With antiperspirant, it is closer to 250 milligrams, about enough sweat to fill a single cold capsule. Antiperspirants work by stopping up the openings of the sweat glands. The active ingredient in all
antiperspirants, from stick to spray to ”natural” rub-on rocks, is some kind of mineral salt. These salts seep into your pores and harden to a gelatinous plug. Aluminum chloride is the most effective, reducing sweat by 55 percent to 70 percent. It also tends to irritate skin and eat through fabric, and is thus sold mainly by prescription to hyperhidrotics- medicine`s term for profuse sweaters.
Most antiperspirants today are made with aluminum zirconium, which cuts wetness 35 percent to 50 percent. Unlike its predecessor, aluminum
chlorhydrate (still used in some products), the zirconium salt can be suspended in a roll-on base of oil and water instead of alcohol and water, which stings and feels wet. The zirconium roll-ons are also about 10 percent more effective than chlorhydrate-provided you shake the bottle. Oil-based roll-ons tend to separate, the active ingredients sinking to the bottom like the spices in an Italian dressing. If you don`t ”shake vigorously,” you are basically, in the words of one industry insider, ”rubbing oil under your arms.”
And, the loser is …
Aerosol antiperspirants are least effective, reducing wetness by only 20 percent to 35 percent. Why? Compared to roll-ons or sticks, aerosols simply don`t cover the territory as well-especially when there`s hair in the way. On top of that, they can`t be made with zirconium; inhaled, it has caused lung abnormalities in lab animals. Applied to skin, it stays on the skin. (For this reason, antiperspirants have been all but cleared in the much-debated link between aluminum and Alzheimer`s disease.)
In the hot room, the women are talking and laughing. I`m not permitted to join the fun, as I`ve used antiperspirant within the last 17 days. That`s how long it takes for every last trace to wash out of the skin. Most is gone after 72 hours. And before that, say 48 hours? ”For the majority of people, you`re going to get the full extent of protection,” says Cal Calogero, consultant to the personal care industry. The Mitchum deodorant boast, ”You could even skip a day,” applies to all of them.
This is a comforting fact to someone who forgot to pack her antiperspirant. Indeed, I am able to report that even after I spent 56 hours in Cincinnati, the waiting room chairs on either side of me in the airport terminal were taken. Given what they say about underarm odors as sex attractants, however, I am not sure how to interpret this and am thankful no wild boars were traveling that day.
