the smell of metals on skin

Why can we smell metal? - it's not actually the metal that smells.

I was wondering last week why my hand smelled bad, then realized it was from simply having touched the metal zipper pull on an old duffle bag. (Yet when I later sniffed the zipper, it didn't smell). Certain metals like that (not sure what kind, but generally the yellowish/bronze colored ones) make my hands smell so horrible that I have to wash them to get rid of the smell. Then I wondered if other people could smell metal too, which led to me finding the above information.