Slashdot Mirror
Experiment Shows Not Washing Jeans for 15 Months is Disgusting But Safe
dbune writes "Young people who argue with their parents over wearing the same pair of smelly jeans can now cite the work of a 20-year old University of Alberta student who wore the same jeans for 15 months straight. From the article: 'Josh Le wore the same pair of jeans to break in the raw denim, so it would wrap the contours of his body, leaving distinct wear lines. He had his textile professor test the jeans for bacteria before washing them for the first time.
The results showed high counts of five different kinds of bacteria, but nothing in the range of being considered a health hazard."
Here's the reason:
He moved out of his mom's basement and didn't visit home for 15 months. He explained away his stinky jeans as a science experiment. ;)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Oh wait
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I was my clothes because I want to smell nice. Not because I am afraid of getting sick from them.
I want to see his control group.
What was the bacteria content when he first bought the jeans?
How many other people tried them on before he bought them ?
What did he wash them with initially ?
Did he wear the jean continually for 15 moths, or did he take them off daily?
Where were they stored when not in use? This experiment can only be valid if they were stored nightly, scrunched up in a ball on the floor of an un vacuumed dorm room.
I'm so ashamed to be from Calgary right now.
The salt from your sweat (over time) will build up on the fabric of the pants, and then when you walk it will start to chafe your skin. It can be quite painful.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why do you need an ethnic qualifier on that?
Did he botch the results when he repeatedly threw his jeans in a freezer?
When his jeans got a bit funky smelling, Le's solution was to put them in the freezer. "There were times when it had a bad odour, like in the seventh month," he said. "That's when I threw it in the freezer and magically when it came out it was odourless."
I know very little about microbiology, but could that have significantly affected growth rates of all/certain types of bateria or killed them altogether?
Article indicated he put the jeans into the freezer when they would start to stink. This would kill some of the bacteria and partially invalidates his test.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The article doesn't make it clear if he only wore that single pair of pants every single day, and if not, how often did he actually wear them? I don't think it is even possible for a pair of jeans to be worn 450 times without completely falling apart, so obviously he must have worn other clothes too.
Better known as 318230.
I find in a humid client jeans will smell within days. In a dry climate perhaps not for a week. He must have been detectable, downwind, for miles.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I guess it depends how you define "safe"
Now I never have to leave my parents' basement^W^W girlfriend's house due to health concerns! Take that, mom! Err, hot girlfriend that I definitely have! :D
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
on your custom made wear lines. your jeans are now super fashionable...oh but wait it took so long to break in your jeans that now it's no longer super fashionable to have custom made wear lines. put the jeans away and wait another year for the fashion cycle to deem them super fashionable again.
It might be safe, but I would imagine people kept far upwind of him!
Maybe you can smell like a hobo and not be a public health hazard, but... you still have hobo-stank all over you.
Reading the title in my RSS feed, I thought it was an onion article.
Clearly, the bacteria were scared off by the smell.
He must be fun at parties.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Maybe he's a Neil Diamond fan?
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Aside from common sense, there are other issues that may arise from unwashed pants. Fungal problems are among the first that come to mind. Ever seen a boy with 15-month jock itch spread over his legs?
Healthiness depends on what you do in them. They could become very unhealthy quickly if he wore them while disposing of medical waste, sewage, or fast food leftovers.
He's got patches on the patches of his old blue jeans.
They used to be new.
They used to be blue.
And they used to be clean.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
University of Alberta student
Something tells me that if he had conducted this experiment a few hundred miles south and spent any reasonable amount of time outside he would have had different results entirely.
I mean, wouldn't his junk shrink from putting on stiff frozen jeans?
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
yes, because white people can't be very fuckable or very nice, black people can't be very smart or nice, latinos are never hansom (sic), asians however, can always be all 6....
"They're called skinny jeans...they're kinda in right now."
"They're kinda not"
The U of A is in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. So I guess that 90% of the time his jeans were frozen anyway, not just the short periods in the freezer.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm not sure about that. I'm pretty sure one of the admins here has been trying a similar test for the last 10 years or so. albeit in 12 month runs by the looks of it. It's kinda hard not to notice that once a year his hair goes from, pretty much, something almost solidified in a helmet to fluffy and you can tell the pattern on his shirt.
So far he hasn't published anything in a microbiology journal, but I'm sure that when he does, the results of all those twelve-month runs will advance science seriously ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Ok, it seems like they're saying "go wear jeans for 15 months without washing, they'll be safe"
Ok, what if you work in a chicken processing plant.
What if you work in a laboratory that deals with human excrement.
Please people, don't start using this study as an excuse...
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
yes. QED.
...that even today, even on slashdot, people can't say "anecdotal evidence" and dump this result in their own personal /dev/null.
...what if you got actually sick while wearing them, or got lice, or...
I want to see a few hundred pairs of jeans worn by all sorts of people with different personal habits and occupations -- some who wear underwear, some who don't, some who shovel horse manure for a living, some who work construction in the hot, sweaty south. I'd bet that 20% of them would end up with that colorful affliction known as "crotch rot" -- any of various fungal infections -- and of course this would instantly become chronic as they'd constantly reinfect themselves. Then there are the various mites that would be living on the sloughed skin cells packed into the weave, the bacteria (harmful or otherwise) fed by the trapped sweat and spilled food and drink and french fry grease wiped off on the thighs, and...
Even in the dirty old dark ages, they would wash clothes once or twice a year. Just yuk. And "bad science" yuk at that to draw a conclusion from an N of one.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Wait people WASH jeans?
he did exploit the best thing about denim jeans
the media picks up on some kid with bad hygiene and calls it science. /slowclap
geeks with strange science projects still not getting any.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
I bet it made everything in his freezer taste better though!
I don't understand this, could someone please give me a car analogy so I don't have to think too hard?
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
That he did not go commando during this experiment, or the bacterial count would have been a bit different.
Seriously, if you can't keep a piece of clothing clean without the washing machine, maybe you should stick to polyester so we can just hose you down like the barn animals you are? Now I know most of you don't know the first thing about fashion and think a pair of khaki's and a golf polo will make the girls scream. Here in Edmonton though, we are cow shit free and most of us don't roll around in the streets. Is 15 months too long? Yup. But he did this to prove that, for those of us that prefer our jeans to be of quality and proper fit, it is possible to safely break in a good pair of jeans. But hey guys, stick to you $15 Levis and striped shirts and you can throw them in the washer and wreck them five times a day if you like!
I recently read that people don't use soap and shampoo when washing and showering, and yet they were better/fine. Weird.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Nothing new here folks. Hippies have been not washing clothes for years!
the smell...
What if someone smoked around him? Where did he sit? etc, etc.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
the smell was unbearable after a few weeks
It was a dark and stormy night. I had just finished washing jeans #2 which I had bought 4-5 years earlier, and inspected them. Being better than shit tier quality, they were, as expected, still in good condition. Even the crotch was in good condition and showed no signs that it might dramatically fail at some inconvenient time. As is typical for dark and story nights, there was a conspicous lack of sunlight and very high humidity, so I knew the jeans would not dry on the line outside. I put them into the dryer, along with some other clothes, and I was careful to add a fabric softener sheet as well. Just as the dryer started rumbling, I heard the phone ring.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Kyrio, this is Reeno."
I was ecstatic. "Hey Reeno!! Good to hear from you finally! What have you been up to?" I had not heard from Reeno in a very long time. We had a falling out many years ago, over some dumb topic like jean quality tiers or something, but that was all water under the bridge, now.
"Well, I have been writing a novel."
"No shit, really?! What's it about?" I was intrigued.
"Oh, I don't think I can sum it up very briefly. Here, let me read it to you."
#include "war and peace.txt"
As Reeno's scratchy voice managed to croak out the final words, I noticed the sunlight shining through the window next to my phone charger (the batteries had long ago failed) and the eery silence that had so long dominated the house after the dryer had finished. What was there to say? I didn't have the heart to tell Reeno that his novel sounded an awful lot like another one written by Tolstoy. It was a very awkward situation -- awkward like realizing that you're not wearing any pants. I went to the dryer and took out good ol' reliable jeans #2.
"Well, Reeno, that's quite a story. I'm glad you called. But I need to go now. Later, dude!"
"Good bye, Kyrio," he said, and I pressed the "END" button on the phone.
Exhausted, I walked out my door into the bright and calm day. A pity; the line would certainly be able to dry my jeans now, but there was no need. That's when I noticed that the storm had blown down the drying line. I bent down to pick up the end so that I could re-tie it, when to my annoyance, there was a terrible ripping sound and the brisk air blew into my crotch.
"Oh no! Jeans #2! Noooo!!" I wailed. I know that some people buy shit tier quality jeans, so they never grow attached to their garments during their ephemeral lifetimes, but it's different for me. I had these jeans for half a decade! Crying and heartbroken, I ran back into the house and picked up the phone.
"Reeno! My jeans! I'm down from four pairs to only three," I brokenly told him through sobs.
"Oh my god! What happened?!"
"It's a long story," I began, and that's when I heard it. The bastard was laughing at me. Laughing!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
...I go to a TEXTILE Professor!!! Yeah, and when I want to know about cloth, I go as a microbiologist! Yeah, that's the ticket.
Because they stink so bad, there's no WAY this guy would even get close to getting laid.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Absolutely Beautiful.
No wonder he has a big smile on his face. And why am I not surprised he is Asian! (denim geek reference)
I'm interested in knowing what jeans they are.
I saw it on Facebook update and swore it was an Onion article until It showed up on my Slashdot RSS feed.
I guess his next experiment which will be greatly anticipated is how long can he go on without taking a shower or changing his underwear.
A 15 month skid mark... GAWD I hope he wore undies!
When I was young I'd get a rash from wearing jeans for a week. It wasn't from bacteria, just from the dirt a kid picks up playing. Our idiot family doctor diagnosed it as psoriasis.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Wouldn't that be more effective than the freezer for decimating bacteria? Metal parts could be a problem, but microwaves tolerate some metal if it's not too big or spiky. I wonder if the bacteria themselves contain enough water to be killed, even if the pants are dry. But if he's been wearing them for months they're probably soaked anyway. Or is he allowed to take them off at night?
As for not washing one's clothes, I've gone crunchy for some years and I was surprised how many people I met who found that hot. At some point I found out that bathing is fun, but it's not a necessity. Wash your ass, wash your hands, brush your teeth, leave the rest alone. Your skin will thank you.
I always drop the lid before I flush, because of the invisible plume of spray that rises up and out. I've trained the rest of the household as well.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
They drive cabs?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I am afraid that if I would make a joke to that, I would get another troll mod ;)
"There were times when it had a bad odour, like in the seventh month," he said. "That's when I threw it in the freezer and magically when it came out it was odourless."
^ that's a cop-out, and it ruins the results. Not that it's much of an experiment anyway.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
Idle is pants. Proof that correlation IS causation!!
damn smelly..