Bleached Hand
How many of you have ever gotten bleach or liquid chlorine on your hand or fingers and noticed that the smell would not go away for several days?
How many of you think it is chloramine?
I thought the smell was chloramine too. I thought that the chlorine reacted with ammonia that was on my skin from sweat and it produced a chloramine and that was what I smelled. I was wrong. First of all, there is way more chlorine than ammonia so it would have destroyed the ammonia, not made a chloramine. Second, washing my hands with soap and water would remove it. It wouldn't. It must be something else.
What we have all been smelling is L-pyrroline. L-pyrroline is formed from the amino acid L-proline when the keratin protein found in the stratum corneum layers of the skin is exposed to free chlorine or other halogens.
How much L-pyrroline is formed varies from person to person but the mechanism is the same. The degradation of skin protein is believed to begin with the rapid chlorination of a protein of an amide protein bond when the skin is exposed to chlorine. If this N-chlorination occurs adjacent to the amino acid L-proline, the ensuing protein fragmentation results in the formation of L-pyrroline. Once the N-chlorination has occurred, the formation of the odor on the skin will continue for several days.
Learn something new every day.