The Scientific Reason Coins Make Your Hands Smell

The reason your hands smell after touching coins is because of the oil on your skin. According to Nature, the oils on your hand react with iron molecules and undergo a chemical reaction that results in certain vaporous odors. Chemicals on your skin give ions to the atoms of the metal you're handling, according to Mental Floss, and those ionized particles cause the oils on your skin to begin decomposing. That decomposition creates the compounds that carry the distinctive smell you recognize.

The smell doesn't have anything to do with the metal itself, according to Nature. We consider it to be a "metallic" smell because it most often happens when handling metals, although the same vapors can be produced in other ways. One example is the way skin interacts with blood. Blood has iron in it, and when it meets the skin, the same chemical reaction can take place — resulting in the "coin" smell, even though no coins were handled.

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