Your 5-year old Coachella wristband harbors a lot more than just memories.
Festival attendees from all around the world love stockpiling artifacts that help immortalize their favorite festival experiences. The festival entry band is one of the remnants almost everyone preserves. Wearing it for weeks (and even months) after the festival has concluded is a common practice, but scientists have revealed that this is a pretty unhygienic ritual.
A Microbiology professor from the University Of Surrey has stated that your decaying band may contain more than 20 times the bacteria found in old clothes. And considering that all that bacteria breeds in that little space is very worrying indeed. The professor posted the results of the post-mortem he conducted of a 3 year old band from Reading Music Festival, and found a large concentration of two kinds of bacteria – staphylococci and micrococci – both of which are dangerous food poisoning agents if directly ingested.
Picking up an illness off your favorite festival wristband is not something you really look forward to, so don’t let nostalgia overpower common sense. Get ’em off your wrist right now.
(Source: Mirror)