What Really Happens If You Don’t Wash Your Towels Regularly?

Photo: Thinkstock

The Situation: It's laundry day, but you're just too busy to wash more than one load. Since you're not into going to work naked, that load is full of pants, shirts, and underwear. You promise yourself you'll do the towels next week, but when the next laundry day rolls around, you're too busy again. And the next. And the next. Before long you can't even remember the last time you threw a load of towels in the wash. And suddenly that towel you keep reusing is not exactly fresh. (Want to exercise more but don't have the time? Then try Fit in 10, the new workout program that only takes 10 minutes a day.)

What You're Worried About: A skin infection! Or athlete's foot. (Commonly picked up at the gym...like these other diseases.) Or maybe fungus will start growing...down there?

The Very Worst That Could Happen: You'll end up in the ICU. It's possible, but very, very unlikely, says Susan Whittier, PhD, director of the clinical microbiology service at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Even though you're clean when you dry off after a shower, you're still transferring skin bacteria to your towel. Those bacteria then multiply, day after day. For the most part, drying off with a towel covered in your own skin bacteria won't cause you any harm. But if you happen to be carrying a pathogenic bacteria like MRSA, as about 10% of healthy people do, and also happen to have dry, cracked skin or a cut, you can infect yourself, Whittier says. There's an even smaller chance—think less than 1%— that infection will go anywhere beyond the skin, but if it does get into your blood, you'll find yourself in the hospital. Even for people who carry MRSA, washing a towel every four or five uses will keep the likelihood of infection in the probably-never-going-to-happen range.

Even if you didn't wash your towels after 4 (or 30) uses, you're still not going to get a fungal infection, Whittier says. "Something like a yeast or fungus isn't part of our normal skin flora," she says. "A normal, healthy person wouldn't be carrying fungus on their skin." No fungus on your skin means no fungus on your towel and therefore no fungal infection—even athlete's foot: If you end up with that, you can blame your shower floor and whoever walked on it before you. (But here's how often you SHOULD wash your towels.)

What Will Probably Happen: You'll walk around smelling like a musty towel. After just four uses, your towel will be covered in thousands—possibly millions—of bacteria. Bacteria that you're then wiping all over your "clean" body. Kind of counterproductive, don't you think?