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The University Of Maryland Is Monitoring Your Farts
Get that gas // Illustration by Kate Walker
Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed small wearable sensors to track people’s gut health… by analyzing their farts.
The Big Stink: Humans have traveled to the far reaches of space and the depths of the ocean… yet very little is known about the gas that comes out of our own bodies. That’s a shame, because the key to understanding gut health — which is increasingly recognized as playing a major role in overall health — may be found in flatulence.
Behind The Butt: UMD’s Human Flatus Atlas study aims to get more people to pass its test.
The researchers created a tiny sensor they call a “Fitbit for farts” that’s about the thickness of three nickels, worn outside a user’s underwear, and easily cleaned with an alcohol wipe.
The device measures streams of hydrogen that escape from the buttocks (farts are about 20% hydrogen, which is significant).
Some 4,000 people across America have signed up to participate in the latest study, with 800 receiving the first round of devices that use components similar to those found in smart rings and wireless earbuds, per The WSJ.
Participants are also asked to take a photo of everything they eat and drink so it can be analyzed alongside readings from the device, which are sent to an app on their smartphones.
Final Fart: The ultimate goal of the study is to figure out what a fart means — the smell, the chemical makeup, the volume and velocity — for each person. That could lead to future diagnoses and interventions that improve quality of life (or even save it). But it starts with understanding the basics, as Brantley Hall, the study’s principal researcher at UMD, notes: “It’s 2026, and we don’t know how many times the average American is farting every day.”
These are the questions that haunt us.
Future Gas: Hall plans to commercialize the sensors through a new startup called Ventoscity, so expect them to land on every dad’s Christmas wishlist once they hit the market.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.