Washing machine mistake means we could be 'spreading faeces' on our clothes, expert warns

An expert has warned that you could be inadvertently spreading poop around your house by making a fairly common washing mistake. Lovely.

Yep, if January wasn’t already bad enough it’s time for me to break the news that you might be washing your undies incorrectly with seriously unpleasant results.

A 2021 study published in the American Society for Microbiology found that the average pair of adult underpants contains 0.1g of faeces - or s**t as you may call it.

Pexels/cottonbro studio

Charles Gerba, a professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona who worked on the study, said in 2010: "If you wash a load of just underwear, there will be about 100 million E. coli in the wash water, and they can be transmitted to the next load of laundry.

"There's about a tenth of a gram of poop in the average pair of underwear.”

And the trick to preventing harmful bacteria - that can be found in your poo - is all down to the temperature you wash your clothes at.

The study explained: “Temperature plays the most important role in terms of pathogen control, requiring temperatures exceeding 40C to 60C for proper inactivation.”

If you wash at temperatures of 30C to 40C then you’re running the risk of passing on harmful pathogens to the rest of your items, such as tea towels and pillowcases. Pink eye, anyone?

Pexels/Polina Tankilevitch

With the rising cost of living many Brits have opted to wash their clothes at lower temperatures to try and cut down on soaring energy prices.

A study carried out by Currys found that more than a third of people (36 percent) has changed how they do their washing, with 50 percent of them revealing they’ve opted to wash at lower temperatures or use the washing machine less.

To combat the risk of cross-contamination of the rest of your laundry, Dr Lisa Ackerley, who goes by the name The Hygiene Doctor on social media, recommends washing your underwear separately.

Speaking to the HuffPost, she said: “With knickers and pants, anything under 60 degrees won’t kill bacteria.

“Don’t put the knickers in with the tea towels on a low wash, because you might have faecal contamination in your knickers and you wouldn’t want that near your kitchen.”

The doctor went on to suggest that if you want to wash at lower temperatures it might be a good idea to pick up laundry sanitiser from the supermarket.

Topics: Health

Claire Reid

Claire is a journalist at LADbible who, after dossing around for a few years, went to Liverpool John Moores University. She graduated with a degree in Journalism and a whole load of debt. When not writing words in exchange for money she is usually at home watching serial killer documentaries surrounded by cats. You can contact Claire at [email protected]