14 DAY TRIAL // Unless you're into day-long nudity, you probably know that, when compared to clothes made from cotton, those made from polyester pretty much reek after you exercise in them or after you wear them for a few hours in a row.
Scientists are yet to find a way to solve this problem, but at least now they know what causes it. In a nutshell, polyester clothes smell way worse than cotton ones do because bacteria that cause foul odors grow better on them.
Writing in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, specialists explain that sweat has little odor when freshly secreted. It's after it gets broken down by bacteria growing on our body and on clothes that it starts to stink.
According to researcher Chris Callewaert with Belgium's Ghent University, the bacteria that give polyester clothes their unpleasant smell when worn for too long are known to the scientific community as micrococci, EurekAlert informs.
“They are known for their enzymatic potential to transform long-chain fatty acids, hormones, and amino acids into smaller – volatile – compounds, which have a typical malodor,” the Ghent University scientist said in a statement.
These bacteria were found to grow better on polyester clothes than on cotton during an experiment carried out with the help of volunteers. Thus, specialist Chris Callewaert and colleagues first had 26 healthy individuals exercise for a full hour.
Once the exercise session came to an end, they collected the T-shirts that they wore while busy burning off calories at a rapid pace, and incubated them for 28 hours. Eventually, they looked at the bacteria populations in the T-shirts and in the volunteers' armpits.
It was thus discovered that micrococci have an easier time growing on polyester clothes. Although this is yet to be confirmed, the Ghent University scientists behind this research project expect that this has something to do with the nature of polyester surfaces.
Specialist Chris Callewaert and fellow researchers expect that, in time, their findings will lead to the development of a method to eliminate foul body odors forever by having non-malodorous bacteria replace the ones that cause unpleasant smells. Still, there is plenty of research left to be carried out.
“BO [body odor] is taboo, and its prevalence is greatly underestimated,” Chris Callewaert commented on the need to carry out such extensive studies into the underlying causes of bad smells. “There is little these people can do to help themselves. Some of them are too psychologically distressed to talk to strangers, or even to leave the house, afraid of what people might think of their smell,” he added.