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Ear wax is the key to personal information

Information about us may be hiding in the grossest corners of our ears.

Researchers found that ear wax may reveal clues about a person’s ethnicity and personal habits.

The team from the Monell Chemical Senses Center collected and heated samples of ear wax from eight white men and eight East Asian men to exam the odorous volatile organic compounds that were secreted. They found that white men had greater amounts of the odorous compounds compared to the men from East Asia, suggesting that you could determine a person’s ethnicity by their earwax.

“In essence, we could obtain information about a person’s ethnicity simply by looking in his ears,” study author Katharine Prokop-Prigge, a Monell chemist, told Fox News.

“While the types of odorants were similar, the amounts were very different.”

The fatty content of earwax might reveal information about certain diseases and the environment.

“Odors in earwax may be able to tell us what a person has eaten and where they have been,” said study co-author and organic chemist George Preti.

“Earwax is a neglected body secretion whose potential as an information source has yet to be explored.”