You know how you can smell metal after handling it?  Well, you can’t smell metal, according to this article at BioEd:

After you’ve grasped an iron railing, a door handle or a piece of steel cutlery, your hand often gives off what seems to be a metallic odour. But Dietmar Glindemann of the University of Leipzig, Germany, and his co-workers say that you’re not smelling the metal at all. They have found that the musty odour comes from chemical compounds in your skin, which are transformed in an instant by the touch of iron.