Microbial Odor Profile of Polyester and Cotton Clothes After a Fitness Session
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
This is consistent with my experience. I stopped buying expensive exercise clothing many years ago because they only last a season before they smell too bad. Instead, I buy them at the end-of-season sales or at discount retailers like Winners [0].
Unfortunately, in Canada it isn't feasible to hang them out in the sun to dry - for much of the year they'd just freeze.
I grew up in northern Alberta. Yes there are less daylight hours, but the sun was often very intense during those hours. Winter tends to be dry so you have bright winters with little cloud cover, for the hours of sun you do get. It just happens to set at 4pm.
Of course eventually that changes if you go far north enough, but very few people actually live past the artic circle. People living on the coast will probably also have very different weather.
Of course i dont think i ever saw anyone hang clothes outside in -40 weather. I feel like drying is not what would happen but i dont know
In the wintertime just hang your washed clothes on a drying rack, either wall-mount or free-standing or what have you. "Free" humidification. Also air-drying works a lot better with front-loaders, which you should be using anyway because they use vastly less water and detergent and are much gentler on clothing.
My expensive-ish cycling clothing, after a ride, goes straight into a bucket of lukewarm water (spandex/lycra deteriorates in strength and stretch very rapidly at surprisingly low temperatures) with about a third of the bottlecap of sport wash. I give it a good swish and go shower. I give it some agitation after I'm done showering and changed. At some point I'll rinse it thoroughly. The cycling shorts get rolled up in a cotton towel and stepped on to wring them of excess water. Everything goes on a clothes hangar out in open air. If I'm riding again in the morning, or if it's humid, I point a small fan at everything so that the pad dries out quickly.
Then I remove them to hang dry them immediately. If I suspect one may smell bad, I hang dry it in the sun or next to a heating vent.
No problems for years.
In the wintertime just hang your washed clothes
on a drying rack, either wall-mount or free-standing
or what have you. "Free" humidification
I have tried a number of humidifiers (evaporative and ultrasonic) and they are all freaking maintenance nightmares in one way or another.
Nothing comes even remotely close to wet towels or wet clothes on a drying rack with a little fan pointed at them. I sleep with a fan on for background noise anyway.
Thick bath towels will soak up enough water to last a whole night or more.
A cubic liter can hold 0.017 mL of liquid water at an average room temperature. If I'm borrowing this math correctly that comes to less than a liter of water in an average room at 100% humidity.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%280.023+atm%29*%281+L%...
Certainly, when we look at the tanks of popular humidifiers on Amazon, the tanks hold less moisture than a rack full of wet laundry particularly if there are wet towels.
I haven't measured this objectively but commercial humidifiers and the "wet clothes on a rack plus fan" method both palpably raise the humidity in a room.
That’s great if it’s a sealed box, but it’s not. Homes are leaky, and typical HVAC systems will replace all that air at least 5 times an hour.
So that’s 2.5 liters, or about 2/3rds of a gallon… per hour.
Now of course this is assuming worst case of going from bone dry to fully saturated, but even if you want to raise it 20 or 30% the numbers would be a third of that, but still.
Humans are very sensitive to humidity. I don’t doubt your towel setup makes things feel more humid, but if you were to actually measure it with a hygrometer I bet the actual number is changing way less than you think.
Or washing them with some vinegar.
Personally I prefer cotton since we have dry heat and cotton keeps me cooler than synthetics or wool.
Collapsible drying racks are a thing. IKEA sells them for cheap. Just leave them by your window, vent or fan.
> I stopped buying expensive exercise clothing many years ago because they only last a season before they smell too bad
I'm very confused.
It still smells despite washing with laundry detergent after each use? My gym clothing has zero smell & I've had them for >5 years, with weekly use for each piece.
The catch: I'm in Norway, and can promise you these clothes aren't seeing sun for most of the year. People don't stink - and it isn't due to being used to the smell. Folks didn't stink when I moved here a decade ago either. Clothes don't stink more in the winter, even though they take more time to dry due to colder house temperatures. You can't leave them for hours in the washer, but that's true even if you are using a dryer.
Of course, there are exceptions. You really should hang them up soon after you take them out of the washer.
However when it is very cold the air is much drier. Contrast that to a temperate but humid climate where everything sits at 20C - 25C w/80% - 100% humidity. Practically a microbial incubator.
- ideally machine washed with a significant spin to remove water. Air drying hand washed items that are sopping wet is a lot harder - might take 4x longer
- hang in a room with decent ventilation and some active air flow. Trying to air dry in the equivalent of a cupboard would be doomed
- hang fully spread out with decent space between the clothes. Drying time will be significantly extended if densely scrunched together with pieces touching. Buy multiple racks to get enough hanging space.
- don't put used wet gym clothes in a laundry bin to fester. If you aren't washing them immediately, hang them up to dry first and put them in the bin later
No issues, summer or winter.
Drying time here (Norway) in winter is about the same as high humidity was in the US. Summer is the dry season here - there is often a forest fire watch and a ban on open flames/fires.
In general, as long as there is air flow, you are fine. It'll take longer/shorter depending on humidity and air temperature.
I live in a cold climate - Norway - and this is the common drying method. Dryers aren't common in homes. Folks will put the rack on a balcony on nice days, and wherever they will fit in when it isn't.
I don't understand this either. I've been seeing loads of articles and posts about smelly gym clothes but I have both gym and outdoors clothes that have been going strong for much longer than 5 years and none of them smell after a wash. In fact, most can be worn for multiple sweaty sessions before they even start to smell.
My experience is that it lasts literally forever (assuming I don't tear it) and does not develop an odor problem over time. It actually feels fairly miraculous to me: space-age style comfortable breathable indestructable clothing.
We have active lives here in the NE USA where summers are hot, humid, and tropical. We sweat a looooooot in these clothes: dog walks, tennis, gym wear, yard work, etc. A loooot.
I get the majority of this clothing from Old Navy because they're cheap and sell most items in tall sizes. I've used other cheap brands that are also just as good; I don't think Old Navy is doing anything special in terms of materials but I think they deserve a shout-out for consistency and dedication to extended sizes both large and small.
I stopped buying expensive exercise clothing
many years ago because they only last a season
before they smell too bad
Something in your clothes washing routine needs an upgrade.
It may be as simple as cramming less laundry into the washer for each load so that the water:clothing ratio is higher. Another common mistake is using too much laundry detergent. Or maybe the washer is musty.
Assuming it's not either of those things a method that works for me is occasionally doing the "laundry stripping" hot water presoaking method.[1] "Recipes" for this vary and I'm not sure that the commonly recommended triple-ingredient mix is necessary; I suspect a few drops of laundry detergent alone would work just as well. However all of the ingredients are cheap as dirt and this method works so I haven't felt the need to experiment. Note that this isn't specific to synthetic fibers; cotton clothes can have their life multiplied this way as well.
Seems like a lot of work but it really isn't. I have a plastic bin in my basement next to the washer and dryer. I have Load B pre-soaking in the hot water mix while Load A is in the washer. You don't need to do this every time you wash your clothes. Just once every $SOME_OTHER_NUMBER loads.
Vinegar is also really effective in destroying odors. I have saved extremely moldy clothes with vinegar. Vinegar stinks but evaporates fast. If you truly can't stomach the smell (some can't) then tumble dry in the dryer until the vinegar smell is gone.
Also, for goodness' sake, don't toss wet sweaty clothes into the hamper. Let them air dry somehow first.
_______
I find Ibex makes the highest quality tees (their tencel/merino/nylon shirts are incredible for hot summers) and underwear. Icebreaker also makes a variety of good stuff.
I generally look for some amount of nylon for durability, but I have a few 100% merino shirts from icebreaker that I've worn intensively for years with no problems.
I did have some pilling issues with the merino/tencel blend from ibex which is a shame. Gorgeous fabric at first; still feels luxurious.
Laundry is a bigger deal since it's wash cold and dry flat with many of these; that can be a cost, equipment, and/or lifestyle adjustment.
I'm often able to wear the same clothes many days in a row without issue.
For pants, I prefer nylon+elastane blends, but it's hard to find. Prana used to make good things here but their Brion II line was a significant drop in quality.
I don't know how bad nylon is to produce, but the durability it adds to clothes is probably an overall net win for the environment; compared to other plastics we consume, it does a lot of work (I've worn some items for years).
Note Prana has recycled nylon in their Brion II line, but unfortunately the quality is way worse; it pills immediately. Environmentally, I'd much rather buy non-recycled plastics that last a lot longer, so I consume/waste less overall.
But the tldr is that I don't know :)
Usually yes, but it might shrink if dried in the dryer.
“Use a normal warm or cool machine wash cycle with regular powder or liquid detergent. Separate light and darks as usual. Don’t use softeners or bleach.”
[0] https://www.icebreaker.com/en-us/caring-for-your-icebreaker....
I own Icebreaker garments btw, here's what Miele says:
Biological detergents contain certain enzymes that are there to remove proteins from a garment. This is how they are effective at cleaning things such as egg from clothing. However, silk and wool are also made up of proteins. Biological detergent cannot differentiate between a bit of egg stain and a bit of silk so the enzymes will eat away at it.
This results in very small, randomly placed, holes on a garment. They won’t appear after the first wash, but tend to appear after several washes once the enzyme has gradually eaten the fabric away.
In your previous post you stated that "regular detergent" destroys wool. This post from Miele seems to be about specific "biological detergents."
Personally I wash my wool with soap like they did back in the day, no worries.
It's always possible I have moths though.
They had discontinued them as they were like $30 for a pair! It looks like maybe they’ve refined the process as I’m seeing similar looking socks on their website for $70 for ten pairs.
I think there's also accepting that after a bit exercise clothes don't smell great close up. If circumstances require really odor free ones (a workout date?) I'd probably buy new clothes.
You could use an autoclave.
- Presoaking your clothes in hot water and small amount of detergent (and/or borax) prior to washing once in a while for a deep clean. Also gets rid of deodorant/antiperspirant buildup in the armpit areas of your shirts. Google "laundry presoaking" or "laundry stripping"
Vinegar works so astoundingly well for laundry odors that I've never felt the need to try enzyme or oxy cleaners.
(However, I've used enzyme cleaners for pet accidents on carpets to great success)
I don't have to use bleach/vinegar anymore as a result to keep the shirts from stinking.
They might be essential to good skin health. We’d be covered with them in the environment that evolved in. But there’s not much research being done yet in that field.
I experimented with it a bit myself a while ago, both «mother dirts» commercial product and making a growth medium for them myself and adding some soil. Did a blind test with my wife to see if they affected smell, and there was a very clear difference. But where I live mother dirt is not available and it’s rather expensive anyway. The experiment encouraged me to use only the mildest body soaps and a gentler washing process which anecdotally has been good for my skin. Maybe I have a healthier skin microbiome now
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022202X1...
I certainly don't think it does. Evaporative cooling works via evaporation and armpit hair seems to do the exact opposite, at least if it's trapped under clothing and not exposed to a breeze.
But... you have had the opposite experience and I am sure you are not hallucinating or lying!
In fact, it is so good at cooling down your body that some exaggerate that cotton kills hikers in cold weather - https://www.heddels.com/2020/01/does-cotton-kill-the-moistur... ...
Dunk a cotton shirt and a moisture wicking shirt into a bucket of water. Pull them out and tell me which one weighs more. Now hang them up and tell me which one drys first.
I hate cotton and generally go for at least a poly blend for this reason... also because cotton inevitably ends up with a weird texture and pilling. Unless it's high-end weave in a dress shirt or something I'll take a synthetic every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I have a few pure cotton undershirts and tshirts I picked up at the equivalent of a dollar store for ¥100 a piece as a broke college student in Japan around a decade ago, and while they’re showing plenty of wear from having seen hundreds of workout hours and laundry cycles, they’re not exhibiting pilling or texture change at all.
100% cotton doesn't do this.
It's quite annoying how cheap 100% cotton shirt packs often have a gray one thrown in there with some %age of polyester. Those always become garage shirts.
Never had a chafing issue.
1)Stop washing your body with the awful, artificial-perfumed crap sold by P&G and the likes. Guess what all that artificial perfume crap smells like after a few hours? Use naturally scented soaps and shampoos, with a washcloth or loofah (gently) to remove dead skin, and rinse with the washcloth or loofa unsoaped to removed excess soap.
2)Stop using fabric softener (which you shouldn't be using on sports clothing anyway.) It's basically rendered fat loaded with artificial perfumes. And people wonder why their clothes are rank...
3)Stop using scented laundry detergents. On sports clothing, use a "sport wash." Atsko band is the cheapest I've seen. If you want to "test drive" it, Penguin Sport wash is the same stuff, just sold in retail stores for more $/oz. Exactly the same stuff.
4)Use a bit of vinegar in the first or final rinse. You can get 20% vinegar in some places for convenience, just beware that it will knock you on your ass if you get a really good whiff of it, and you should rinse it off your skin quickly. Vinegar will among other things help kill mold spores (bleach does not!)
5)Clean out all the nooks and crannies in your washer, the dispensers, door seals, etc. Once in a while run the hottest cycle and a cup of citric acid, or a bunch of vinegar.
My expensive-ish cycling clothing, after a ride, goes straight into a bucket of lukewarm water (spandex/lycra deteriorates in strength and stretch very rapidly at surprisingly low temperatures) with about a third of the bottlecap of sport wash. I give it a good swish and go shower. I give it some agitation after I'm done showering and changed. At some point I'll rinse it thoroughly. The cycling shorts get rolled up in a cotton towel and stepped on to wring them of excess water. Everything goes on a clothes hangar out in open air. If I'm riding again in the morning, or if it's humid, I point a small fan at everything so that the pad dries out quickly
I don't use deoderant. Multiple partners have complemented me for my body smell, or lack thereof. Because I don't coat my body and clothes in shit cranked out of some frankenlab at Proctor and Gamble.
I learned this the hard way—never share bar soap with anyone else. Once you have been introduced with a stinky strain it’s too late.
> It has mostly to do with whether you’re infected with a stinky bacteria or not.
The bacteria is determined (partly) by your genetics and the type of sweat glads you have. Eccrine sweat glands go directly to the surface of the skin (secrete: water, NaCl, K), while apocrine sweat glands connect into hair follicle (secrete: protein, lipids,): the bacteria feed off the latter.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_gland
The gene on whether you have (more) apocrine glands is ABCC11:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCC11
Asians are more likely to have to have the gene variant that makes you less smelly (Allele A).
Argument based largely on things not occurring in nature… especially loaded phrases like ”frankenlab,” “artificial perfume crap,” and “naturally scented” actually weaken your argument here by appealing to some sense of “what’s natural” instead of a less inflammatory description of what’s worked for you.
as i entered my late 20s i got weird scalp issues and that prompted me to look into it - turns out NOT using the products is what helped.
Upping one's laundry-fu is, seriously, one of the biggest life upgrades a person can make.
It is a money-saver and a major life upgrade in various other ways. All for very little effort.
When I was a kid, our three-kid family did laundry once a week and there were fewer than 7 loads.
Do laundry weekly. Years old gym clothes will smell just fine.
Doing a load of laundry for a single set of workout clothes is horrible environmentally. Even when our kid was young, it was every other day at most, and I was running more than that at the time.
if you’re talking a 1 hour workout, then i agree.
the bummer is that synthetic materials are so comfortable to wear during exercise compared to cotton and so easy to care for compared to merino wool.
i just accept it and smell like my body has been turned inside out after long exertions.
That's not universal and it hasn't been my experience at all (up to, let's say, 8-10 hour hikes).
very light amounts of bleach work great. For example if you let them soak in a swimming pool (typically around 5ppm) for 10 minutes they will be stink free.
You can do the equivalent with 1tsp of bleach in a few gallons of water (really about 20ppm or a little more).
Obviously products like oxyclean can also oxidize the molecules.
I made the mistake of buying a bunch of this stuff a while back and I can't bring myself to wear it. I feel like it makes me sweat far more and it stinks very quickly.
I have far less of a problem wearing cotton and and a great experience wearing merino wool.
The T-shirts were collected, sealed in plastic bags,
and stored at room temperature in the dark, so
bacterial growth occurred
[...] The bags were kept at room temperature (20°C)
in the dark for 28 h.
It's more of a simulation of what happens when you accidentally leave wet sweaty clothes in your gym bag, or are forced to wear sweaty clothes for multiple consecutive days without a wash. (It certainly be nice to have fabrics that could survive such conditions without stinking, I admit)
When actually wearing synthetic "moisture-wicking" fibers, I find they stay much fresher smelling as long as they are exposed to air so that they can actually do their job by encouraging evaporative cooling. As opposed to cotton, which soaks up gallons of sweat and takes ages to fully dry.
Remember, fresh sweat doesn't reek -- that's why you don't smell bad in a sauna, with fresh sweat pouring out of every pore. It's stale sweat that reeks. Specifically, it is the waste products of bacteria living in stale sweat. That is what eventually smells bad.
They are trying to correlate materials with biological growth that causes BO in clothes in order to find out if certain types of material or treatments to material could be used to construct activewear that doesn't stink when you sweat in it.
What about the process seems useless to that end?
I will admit, though: if they cook up a fabric that stays fresh after such a torture test it should certainly perform well in the real world.
Is there any polite way to tell a stranger, "you smell really bad"?
I'm taking about paint-stripping, eye-watering, thriving microbial ecosystem stink here, where the air around them is warm and thick. No one should have to suffer that.
A clean person wearing clean clothing shouldn't typically have BO after an hour or two of sweating.
Fresh sweat has a small, but doesn't reek. The reek comes after the bacteria have had time to grow.
If somebody absolutely reeks at the gym they are doing something wrong. They are using smelly dirty gym clothes or are showing up with some nasty body odor already.
I don't expect anybody to take a full shower before hitting the gym but it only takes a literal minute or two to clean the armpits and crotch with a washcloth and I would expect anybody hitting the gym to do that type of bare minimum.
Personal opinion but I don't really expect people to wear deodorant at the gym. I still smell the reek, and adding ten different peoples' scented deodorants to the mix makes it worse for me. And anti-perspirant is IMO unhealthy to wear during exercise.
Why is that? Are you worried about the pores? It's hard for me to imagine antiperspirant being so effective it would actually lead to insufficient sweat.
The coolest and most comfortable possible workout for me involves wearing a sleeveless shirt, lots of air circulation, and no anti-perspirant.
As a bonus my armpits don't stink afterward either. For much the same reason that people don't reek in a sauna. Fresh sweat pouring out of your body doesn't reek. Remember, it's only stale sweat that reeks -- it's the waste products of bacteria that smell, not the sweat itself.
(I most definitely do smell body odor on myself+clothing once the sweat is stale, so I'm not noseblind to myself)
My forehead was pouring sweat, like that scene from Airplane[1], and I just couldn't understand why. I mean I was used to getting sweaty but nothing like this, I had trouble seeing for all the sweat in my eyes.
That's when I realized my armpits were bone dry, and made the connection to the antiperspirant.
Cotton takes a lot of time to dry.
Now Decathlon also has acessible merino wool products so I don't have to spend a fortune on some other technical brands.
The amazing thing about it, and I don't understand how it works, but it absolutely does, is that not only is it cooling when you're hot, but it's warming when it's cold outside. Something to do with fabric expanding/contracting due to the temperature difference, and thus favoring air flow in one direction or the other maybe?
I agree "it's just viscose/rayon" -Some people make huge claims to antibacterial properties of bamboo fibre. There's a couple of models of using it, the one which most people can buy is pretty much rayon. The other one is closer to how hemp or linen is "retted" into fibres, which are spun.
The first step would be public awareness. I haven't even seen anyone IRL mention it before. synthetic fiber based clothing is everywhere and worn without any second thought by most. So we're quite quite far from even public awareness at this point.
Maybe in the future, when oil isn't cheap we might see their usage drop, but maybe then you'll see clothing made out of 100% recycled (downcycled) plastic bottles.
Esp, now with the micro plastic concerns there is no reason to buy them except for outerware
Most people aren't doing that though. The same table also lists "No. of washes/wk", presumably referring to body washing rather than clothes washing. All except three are washing daily. True, you could theoretically be washing twice daily, but if you don't have a work shower you'll be forced to wash at home, which kills most of the point because most people you interact with during the day would have smelled your odor. Most people don't have access to work showers so it's not really realistic to expect people to showers instead of using deodorants/antiperspirants.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/business/china-consumers-...
but didn't ruin the pits of my clothing.
My wife and are active and sweat a lot here in the tropical summers of NE USA. I am the clothes washer. I have lots of experience fixing this.
You can fix that by presoaking your clothes in hot water and a teeny amount detergent (and/or Borax and/or Arm & Hammer laundry booster aka "laundry stripping") for a few hours.
Can also try scrubbing some detergent directly into the pits before tossing into the wash. I've heard vinegar works too. Just don't mix vinegar and bleach.