# Chemical Characterization of Human Body Odor Headspace Components
## 5 Conclusions  
This study aimed to develop a whole-body odor sampling approach to test the capability of a human chamber to yield detectable odor signature via instrumental means. The chamber was used in a laboratory setting to obtain the odor profile from a set of ten (10) participants. Human headspace samples were collected via four strategically placed SPME fibers within the cavity of the chamber to extract participant odor VOCs. This instrumental capability allowed the chemical characterization of a range of previously reported human odor volatiles, including frequent classes such as aldehydes and aliphatics. Whole-human body odor depicted the highest number of reported VOCs, thereby showcasing a distinction from individual human biospecicns such as hand, axillary, and exhaled breath samples. The chamber whole-human body odor samples depicted statistical clustering as a function of gender, reinforcing the published literature of the capability of VOC odor profiles to categorize individuals by gender. Future studies can exploit this body sampling approach to integrate with canine testing or to extend its applicability in volatilomic work within medical diagnostic and forensic applications to further understand the complex human scent signature. While nonanal and decanal were the only compounds detected across all four sample types, this study corroborates previous studies within the human scent discipline, as commonly reported compounds were identified. While this study only focused on the analysis of ten (10) individuals, future studies could expand the number of participants. This expansion in the number of participants will also add to the pre-existing list of human scent compounds that have been reported thus far. While personal hygiene restrictions were placed on the subjects of this study, dietary restrictions were not. This could account for certain compounds seen in the results. Future studies that seek to collect human VOCscould place dietary restrictions or stricter personal hygiene restrictions on their participants to control and monitor extraneous odor contaminations. Overall, the present study showed that human body sampling is feasible via SPME-GC/MS, as a total of 105 compounds were identified from the ten (10) subject participants tested. Additionally, the methods used allowed for the collection of hand, axillary, and breath odor volatiles to provide a biospecimen comparison to the chamber sampling approach. Whole-body odor volatiles were successfully sampled, allowing for this chamber system not only to allow for chemical characterization but also to be concurrently utilized in an olfactometer set-up for canine odor perception studies of human scent. While the breath collection method yielded only ten compounds, the compounds were commonly reported breath VOCs. Statistical analysis showed that the odor profiles collected from the whole-human body sampling clustered closer to each other, while the odor profiles of the individual biospecimens clustered amongst each other. This information can be valuable for future studies that wish to identify the prominent compounds within human scent detected by canines and provide a framework of study for human scent odor signatures. Methodology, investigation, data analysis, writing--original draft, writing--review and editing, A.C.M. and A.C.; resources, writing--review and editing, E.O.A.-R. and N.J.H. ; funding acquisition, writing--review and editing, M.N.M. and J.D.G. ; methodology, supervision, writing--original draft, writing--review and editing, P.A.P.-T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This research was funded by the US Army DEVCOM Chemical Biological Center. The views and ideas expressed within the paper are strictly those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official view or position of the sponsor. The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors on request. Author [PERSON] was employed by the company Exect Inc.