Yes, iron. You can clearly taste it. That's one of the things I noticed after using a plasmacutter to cut through sheet, the vaporized iron stays afloat long enough that if you take off your mask and get a whiff it smells like blood.
I was under the impression the iron in the blood was in the form of hemoglobin. Does hemoglobin itself have a metallic taste, or is the taste caused by something else in the blood?
Good question I do not know but I associate the two (blood, iron vapor) very closely. It may well be that the blood also contains some free iron but Iron is so toxic that I doubt that would be enough to taste directly so it may well that haemoglobin itself tastes metallic but it only has a handful of Iron atoms in it compared to a mountain of other stuff.
