• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

This Is Why Some Of Your Clothes Smell So Bad

July 10, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

If you’ve ever skipped a laundry day and been forced to hit the gym in your backup sports kit, you’ll know that when it comes to stinkiness, not all fabrics are created equal. But exactly why that is has proved elusive – until now.

Advertisement

“Although we know that polyester is smellier after being worn next to sweaty armpits compared to cotton T-shirts, we haven’t really known why,” said Rachel McQueen, a clothing and textiles scientist in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences at the University of Alberta and first author of a new paper investigating the phenomenon, in a statement this week.

“Now we have a better understanding of how odorants transfer and are selectively absorbed by various fibre types in sweat.”

To study the stink, McQueen and her colleagues set out to mimic the effects of exercise on various types of fabric. First, they soaked them in a bottle filled with a solution of simulated sweat, which they shook vigorously for a couple of minutes before setting aside for half an hour. The fabric was then removed from the liquid, dehydrated a bit, and left again to give the odor particles time to percolate. 

Next, they needed to actually measure how whiffy the fabric had got. Just letting each of the researchers have a sniff and score them out of ten wouldn’t be good enough, so the team turned to a technique called mass spectrometry – a way of measuring the mass-to-charge ratio of ions in a given sample. If that doesn’t mean much to you, don’t worry: you can think of it as a high-tech science-nose, capable of picking out the odorants in the air in real-time.

The results showed a clear pattern. Fabrics made from cellulose – that is, natural fibers made from plants, like cotton, linen, or hemp – absorbed and released lower amounts of the smelly odor compounds. Synthetic fibers like polyester, on the other hand, as well as wool, took in more of the stink – and released more too.

Advertisement

To understand why this is, we need to look at the constituent ingredients of sweat. Obviously, it’s mostly water, but it also contains oily compounds, McQueen pointed out – in fact, that’s where the odor is formed.

And, depending on the particular chemistry of the fibers, these oils can interact differently. “While water-loving cellulosic fibres such as cotton and viscose absorb more of the water from sweat than polyester does, polyester doesn’t want to absorb the water,” McQueen explained. “It’s more oil-loving, and it absorbs more of the odorants, which don’t dissolve in water, and more of the oily compounds, which could also later break down and become smelly.”

The smellier fabrics weren’t all bad news, though. For nylon and wool at least, that bigger release of odor particles didn’t actually last that long – sure, they were stinkier than their cotton brethren at first, but after 24 hours the smell had dissipated a lot. “That tells us that while polyester still needs to be washed, for nylon and wool garments, people might be able to freshen them by just airing them out rather than laundering every time,” McQueen pointed out.

But while most of the fabrics had at least some redeeming quality, smell-wise, there was one clear loser in the sniff test: polyester.  

Advertisement

“Basically, if you’re concerned about smelly clothes, then keep away from polyester,” McQueen said. “Even with some of the anti-odor claims on some clothing labels, you might want to be cautious. If the anti-odor property is due to an antimicrobial, it may not be as effective as you think, because there’s another mechanism in play, which is all about the fibre chemistry and the interaction with odorants.”

The paper is published in the Textile Research Journal.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Sendoso nabs $100M as its corporate gifting platform passes 20,000 customers
  2. Exclusive-Afghan central bank drained dollar stockpile before Kabul fell – document
  3. What Makes Super Glue So Damn Sticky?
  4. Smallest Star Ever Discovered And It’s Only A Tiny Bit Bigger Than Earth

Source Link: This Is Why Some Of Your Clothes Smell So Bad

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Dolphins May Not “See” With Echolocation, But Instead “Feel” With It
  • Confirmed! Comet 3I/ATLAS Is Indeed An Interstellar Visitor, Quite Different From Its Predecessors
  • At 192, Jonathan – The Oldest Living Land Animal – Has Lived Through 40 US Presidents
  • 300,000-Year-Old Wooden Tools “Made By Denisovans” Discovered In China
  • Why Do Cats Eyes Glow? For The Same Reason Great White Sharks’ Do, Silly
  • G-astronomical News: Michelin-Starred Meal To Be Served On The ISS
  • In 2032, Earth May Witness A Once-In-5,000-Year Event On The Moon
  • Brand New Microscope Designed For Underwater Reveals Stunning Details Of Corals
  • The Atlantic’s Major Circulation Current Is Showing Worrying Signs, But Is Collapse Near?
  • “The Rings Held The Answer”: How We Finally Figured Out Saturn’s Day Length In 2019
  • Mystery Of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” Solved By A Dentist And A Protractor
  • Asteroid Ryugu’s Latest Mineral Is As Weird As Finding “A Tropical Seed In The Arctic”
  • IFLScience The Big Questions: Are We Living Through A Sixth Mass Extinction?
  • Alien Abduction Or A Trick Of The Mind? A Down To Earth Explanation Of Close Encounters
  • Six Months Into Trump’s Presidency, Americans Report Record Low Pride In Being American
  • TikToker Unknowingly Handles Extremely Venomous Cone Snail And Lives To Tell The Tale
  • Scientists Sequence Oldest Egyptian DNA To Date, From A Whopping 4,800 Years Ago
  • “Uncharted Waters”: Large Hadron Collider Begins Colliding Oxygen For The First Time
  • 125,000-Year-Old Neanderthal “Fat Factory” Shows They Gorged On Bone Grease
  • On July 3, Earth Will Reach Its Farthest Point From The Sun – 152 Million Kilometers Away
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version