Next time you are on a crowded train and the person next to you has a bit of body odour, spare a thought for those astronauts that go off for six months at a time.

This Scientific American article tells it all.

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... Mir, which "had its own odor, like 12 years in a sock closet,"

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Soaps or shampoos with alcohol are not allowed so they must use wipes and herbal soaps for washing themselves and their clothes. They are currently experimenting with silver threaded shirts and bed linen to help alleviate the odours.

Glad it's them and not me.

I'll certainly not be signing up any day soon for the Space Program Gross! (Smells get to me really fast!)

Why are alcohols not allowed on the space stations, Exit?

Flynn, I think this might be the answer you are looking for.

Check this out. It is one cool site on hygiene in space.

http://www.space.com/news/spacestation/space_cosmetics_000525.html

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"Since people in the weightlessness and closed volume become oversensitive to smells, there will be no perfume and other alcohol-based hygienic means in space, as well as nothing what could generate a strong smell inside the station," Shumilina said. "Towels and napkins used aboard ISS will have a light mixed odor of almond and green apples, and toothpaste will have a menthol taste."

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There is another reason to avoid products with alcohol into orbit. "Water in space is recycled from the station’s air humidity," said Anatoly Noskin, IBMP deputy chief designer. "If this humidity contains alcohol, the regenerated product will be pure vodka, not a water."

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Whacko! Where do I sign up?

And if you don't feel like checking out the link, did you know:

"People sweat in space more than on Earth," said Valery Morgun, the chief physician at the space agency's Star City training complex for cosmonauts.

Cosmonauts lose about 2 or 3 pounds (1 kilogram) for every six hours of spacewalking, and skin in space regenerates much faster than on Earth.

"A cosmonaut loses up to 3 grams (0.1 ounces) of skin daily as well as about 5,000 cells of epithelium during one change of his/her clothes," Morgun said.

On Earth, a shower would be the answer to all that dead skin, but water is a scarce resource in a spacecraft and on stations. Crew members using a wash basin on Mir were limited to a cup of water for their morning splash on the face.

Water also behaves strangely in space, splitting at times into walnut-sized drops that stick to the skin.

"It was very uncomfortable to take shower in space," Shumilina said. "Water had to be sprayed in the shower cabin and a cosmonaut had to breathe through a special tube put through the wall of the cabin to avoid choking."

Also, preparing the cabin for showers took as long as bathing itself. For this reason, the crew members of the seventh main mission to Mir (1990) threw the shower cabin into space.