MORE than a quarter of London’s men don’t change their underpants every day.
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That’s one of the sick findings of a new survey from Kelcoo, a price comparison site, which found that only seven per cent of women don’t manage to switch knickers daily.
Worse still for London’s men is that 16% of them don’t bother to swap clean for dirty pants for three days or more. Only four per cent of women leave things festering for that long.
It’s not a clean sweep for women, as the survey found that 28% of both sexes are still walking around in underwear that are at least five years old.
All this not-washing is a green light to germs, according to Dr Lisa Ackerley, of Hygiene Audit Systems, which conducted stringent underpants tests for Kelcoo.
But the everyday-changers and new-pants-wearers can’t afford to be smug, as 80% of ‘clean’ pants carry loads of bacteria, too.
Ackerley says the problem is down to people washing their smalls on a low temperature cycle.
“The levels of bacteria detected expose the fact that lower temperature wash cycles don’t do a good enough job,” said Ackerley.
“The testing also highlights the risks people take by washing their underwear with other household items such as tea towels.
“On a low temperature wash, doing so can easily result in cross contamination of bacterial nasties from pants to tea towels or kitchen cloths, which could ultimately cause food poisoning.”