This Perfume is Activated by Sweat

Athletes, the air conditioning-deprived, and anyone with a low tolerance for heat, wipe your brow and take heart: Researchers have created a new fragrance that actually smells better the more you sweat. 

This ingenious new perfume comes from Nimal Gunaratne and his team at the Queen’s University Ionic Liquid Laboratories in Belfast. Here’s how it works: A pleasant fragrance in its raw form is chemically attached to odorless liquid salt. The moment a drop of water (or perspiration) hits this fragrance-infused substance, the perfume comes to life. More perspiration releases more perfume onto the skin.

In addition to working with your sweat, the fragrance also works to eradicate the bad smell all together by attacking the “thiol” compounds that create bad body odor. So you can sweat without feeling self-conscious, and don’t have to worry about lifting your arm above shoulder level in public.

"Not only does it have great commercial potential, and could be used in perfumes and cosmetic creams, but it could also be used in others area of science, such as the slow release of certain substances of interest,” says Gunaratne. 

No word yet on what, exactly, this perfume will smell like. Ideally it’s something that could be worked into already-existing fragrances and products. The researchers are reportedly in talks with a perfume development company in an effort to get the sweat-activated perfume into stores.