> fingertips smelling of it for days It's even more insidious than that -- it is not only your fingertips that smell, since it penetrates the skin so readily.

> fingertips smelling of it for days It's even more insidious than that -- it is not only your fingertips that smell, since it penetrates the skin so readily. Pure DMSO itself is odorless, but it is metabolized into DMS, which stinks unbelievably strongly of garlic. The DMS has a very high systematic half-life (38 hours!!!) and remains dissolved in the blood, meaning your blood itself will stink of garlic for days after exposure. The gut punch, however, is that the victim is reportedly unable to smell it (probably because their olfactory tissue is literally awash in DMS), so they don't realize they smell like walking garlic bread.