Donald Trump once again found himself at the center of a rumor as strange as it is uncomfortable: that his body gives off a strong smell of urine. The claim has been circulating for years, but gained renewed traction after Adam Kinzinger made a post mocking the alleged smell of the former president.
The curious thing is that the rumor touches on a subject that does have a biological explanation: body odor changes with age. The skin produces different substances, and some people develop a mustier or more pungent aroma, a phenomenon related to a molecule called 2-nonenal.
And here is where the association that makes the rumor so unsettling appears: old age, physical deterioration, and death often appear together in the collective imagination. But that doesn’t mean that a particular smell is a sign that someone is close to dying.
The smell of ammonia or urine, for example, may be associated with dehydration, urinary problems, or incontinence. It is not an “odor of death” and does not make it possible to calculate how much time a person has left.
In other words: the gossip plays on a very human association—aging means approaching the end of life—but science does not allow a body odor to be turned into a sentence. 🫢
