You Should Be Washing Your New Clothes

Those fresh and clean new clothes you just bought from your favorite department store have poop on them.

By nowproducerdave on April 12, 2018
(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

They’re new clothes, right? Go ahead and wear them once or twice before washing them, it’ll be fine, right? Not if you don’t want other people’s poop on you.

Some health researchers tested a variety of new clothing items from “popular chain stores” and also “high-end fashion brands,” and found that a lot of the clothes contain various levels of bacteria including the strep and staph, as well as norovirus. That’s not all. The clothes were also found to contain fecal matter. Actual poop, on brand new clothes. Now, it’s not found in high enough levels to actually cause an infection most likely, but if you have a cut or some kind of open wound, the possibility is there. The clothes may have been treated with chemicals too, whether it’s detergents, mosquito repellant from the factory location where they’re made, pesticides – anything – and you may have some kind of reaction to those chemicals and never discover the source.

See also: A toy makeup kit sent a toddler to the hospital.

You don’t know who touched the clothes before you got to the store. There’s probably at least 5 different people before you even realize a store has a new shipment in. There are people at the factory, there are people at distribution warehouses, truck loaders/unloaders, and then staff at the store. And I know from experience there are usually two or three different people to touch clothes and go through them before the garment even sees the sales floor. Also, how many people have tried on that shirt? How many of them toss it onto the floor of the dressing rooms, where shoes walk on that have been in the public bathroom? Ok, now you’re probably going by the hand sanitizer aisle at Target next time you look for clothes, sorry. Point is, wash your new clothes before wearing them. I feel like most of us probably do already, but at the same time, a lot of people in the world don’t. Check out the original story here.

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