Editorial: Secondhand clothing carries “germs”? So does all clothing — new included
A recent headline pointing to secondhand clothes as a source of germs was one heard 'round the world. Here's why it wasn't telling the full story, and what vintage seekers actually need to know
Thrifting and shopping secondhand may be more popular than ever, but both took a hit this month on the PR front.
On Nov. 8, The Conversation published an article called “Secondhand clothing can be swimming with germs — here’s what vintage shoppers need to know.”
These days, a single headline carries weight because most people don’t read past it.
Case in point: In a study published earlier this month, Pennsylvania State University researchers analyzed 35 million highly shared social media posts containing external links over a three-year period — and 75 per cent of those shares came from people who never clicked through to actually read the article.
In short, people share information without actually reading the information. A lot.
While the article, written by Primrose Freestone, an associate professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Leicester in England, did indicate that new clothing also carries germs, and did provide washing tips for garments to rid them of pathogens, both references were deep within the text.
Most people would have never read that far to find out.
A headline matters and should capture the whole story — especially if it could be detrimental otherwise (in this case to a whole industry of secondhand and vintage vendors and related service providers).
With 100 billion new garments produced every year, 92 billion tonnes of textile waste hitting landfill annually and hotter-than-ever global temperatures fuelled by industrialization, shopping secondhand is at this point necessary.
Canada alone produces 500 million kilograms (1.1 billion pounds) of textile waste every year. The U.S. is north of 34 billion pounds. We need to lead more people to secondhand shopping, not away from it with fear-mongering.
This wouldn’t be much of an issue if this piece had been published for a small audience. But The Conversation’s journalism is syndicated, meaning it gets distributed to many media outlets worldwide. When capped with a sensational headline about a timely trending topic like this one, the reach tends to be further.
Needless to say, the article and its headline spread quickly. (Pun intended, sadly.) My Google News alerts pinged that whole weekend with variations on the story.
Dismayed, I posted to The Vintage Seeker’s Instagram channel on Nov. 11 to clarify the wording of their chosen headline and to urge shoppers to consider the cleanliness of their new clothing, if they indeed are worried about “germs.” I had good conversations with the community and sent out a notice about it a newsletter.
By the sixth day of publication, the stories hadn’t slowed down.
On Nov. 19, I opened my phone to see a headline in the Google Chrome Discover tab: “Secondhand clothes at thrift shops may harbour disease-causing germs.”
Now we’ve added thrift shops to the headline. And on it goes. It’s Nov. 25 as I’m writing this and the headline is still appearing in my alerts as more outlets run it. Seventeen days now — this one’s got long legs in today’s 24/7 content world.
So here I find myself, about to refute one of the longest-running, most-damaging, hardest-to-shake stigmas about not just used clothing but secondhand in general: that it’s “dirty.”
Bacteria is everywhere
So, is secondhand clothing “swimming in germs”? Sure, it can be, but that’s not the whole story — germs can be found on any type of clothing, secondhand or new. (And not all the time, either.)
Let’s say it another way: New clothing can be “swimming in germs,” too. The same kinds of germs. Staphylococcus aureus. E.coli. Streptococcus. Candida albicans.
These pathogens can be transmitted by skin-to-fabric contact with secondhand clothes that have been previously worn, and new clothes that other shoppers have tried on.
And lest you think that ordering new, untouched garments online is the best way to reduce the likelihood of these fabrics coming into contact with someone else, know these same contaminants can also be found on straight-out-of-the factory, new-in-box clothing due to inadequate sanitation, poor working conditions and cross-contamination during the production process.
To boot, there are high levels of toxic heavy metals and chemicals like lead, PFAS and phthalates coming out of newly manufactured fast fashion.
The potential for contamination is everywhere.
Now, before you get too skeeved out and pledge to a life of nudity, let’s look at some facts.
While The Conversation article zeroes in on secondhand, it does indicate that all clothing can be vehicles for infectious pathogens, referencing a 2011 study conducted by the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene.
Some choice tidbits quoted in that paper? Staph was found on 3.6 per cent of bathroom towels in U.K. homes, and e.coli on 2.6 per cent. These pathogens are already living on other things we encounter in our daily lives. Clothes are just another place they can turn up.
In checking bacterial transfer between skin and fabrics, researchers in that study found it was more likely to happen if the fabric was moist — and even still, it was a one per cent transfer rate from skin to moistened polycotton. The study also said bacterial transfer was “barely detectable” between dry fabrics.
Consider other surfaces you interact with: the same study reported the transfer efficiency between a faucet contaminated with micrococcus luteus and skin is 40 per cent, and between a contaminated phone receiver and skin, nearly 42 per cent.
From clothing that had been washed, however? The bacterial transfer rate was 0.13 per cent for laundered 100 per cent cotton and 0.13 per cent for 50-50 cotton-poly blend.
Dr. Freestone also references a 2022 paper about secondhand clothing at a flea market in Pakistan. The clothing studied was unwashed in bales in open markets, so a much different environment than inside someone’s home, at a curated resale shop, or even a thrift store floor.
The incidence of pathogens was much higher, as expected given the environment. But even for contaminated adult and baby clothes, the bacterial count was next to nil after the clothes were washed with detergent.
Pat at Postmodern Bohemian Vintage in Moncton, N.B offers her take: “While all of the examples can certainly be used to suggest that secondhand clothing may have come in contact with stuff that could hurt us, I don't think that the author has really demonstrated that the typical customer buying secondhand at a local shop or pop-up in, for example, Canada, is in any more danger than they are taking the subway, or going to a gym.”
No clothes are “clean” when you buy them
Let’s turn to some studies about new clothing.
In 2018, Philip Tierno, professor of microbiology and pathology at New York University, conducted studies of new clothing and found a range of bacteria and pathogens hiding on garments from people trying them on in fitting rooms. And he said the number of people might surprise you.
“It’s not four or five or six people; it’s dozens and dozens ... if that garment sits there for weeks or a month,” he told HuffPost at the time.
When I posted about this on social media, people who had previously worked retail hit the comments section. Anecdotes ranged from finding stains, insects, rodents and unknown substances on brand-new clothing to a comment from user @maryjanesinclair1866, also a garment manufacturer, who said if the public saw how clothing was handled in a factory, “you would indeed want to wash it before wearing.”
In a 2020 study quoted by Dr. Freestone, GMS Hygiene and Infection Control indicates that contaminated fabrics may be a source of bacterial transmission for weeks, especially in humid environments.
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While that means pathogens can linger on secondhand clothes, it also means they can kick around for equally as long on new clothes at your favourite store.
All this to say, new clothing is not necessarily “safer.”
“Those who have specific health concerns should be vigilant no matter what they buy or where they buy it,” says Pat at Postmodern Bohemian Vintage.
Stigma of secondhand persists
I’m going into detail about all of these studies to illustrate why the headline and angle in The Conversation is damaging to the secondhand space.
Aside from being a possible deterrent to consumers exploring used goods, it’s created unnecessary fear and questions about secondhand garments when caution and common sense should be exercised on all clothing.
Resellers already spend time educating the public about the value of secondhand from both a financial and a sustainability perspective — and they're frequently up against people protesting their prices and questioning their ethics as they supposedly "flip for profit." Many a seller will tell you about feeling like they need to defend the value of their service to potential customers.
Moreover, the piece perpetuates an insidious long-held stereotype that secondhand is unclean, dirty or altogether unsafe to engage with — and that’s rooted in classism and racism.
The stereotype’s complex origins are better described by historians and cultural anthropologists, but in a nutshell it goes like this: The Industrial Revolution gave widespread access to “new.” Those who had the means to buy new were often affluent, white individuals — and they were the ones setting the social norms on how to dress and present one’s home.
Demonstrating wealth through material items has happened for centuries in kingdoms and aristocracies.
But in modern times, things intensified for the general public during the "keeping up with the Joneses" era, which began in the 1910s and continued well after World War II ended.
Buying new became synonymous with wealth, and conspicuous consumption with status.
Poor and low-income groups, often part of marginalized or racialized segments, who couldn’t afford a steady stream of new items got access to them later once they turned up at the thrift stores. And because those groups didn’t have “new,” it reinforced the perception of middle- and upper-income households that their own social standings were superior.
Value was placed on “new,” and anything “used” was seen as less valuable (except, perhaps somewhat perplexingly, in the world of art and antiques).
Add to this the practice of thrift stores merchandising clothing as-is — unwashed, and, as is natural with clothing of a certain age, with a mildew odour at times — and secondhand quickly became associated with the idea of it being “dirty.”
This stigma has lingered for decades, though we’re gradually breaking it as more people embrace secondhand shopping. Online secondhand retailer thredUP reports that 52 per cent of all consumers shopped secondhand apparel in 2023.
Now here we have a widely shared article that directly connects secondhand clothing to "germs" — even though the author states “It's difficult to say how great your risk of actually contracting an illness from secondhand clothes is (as no study has been done to date).”
No study has been done, but the reputational damage has.
Proper care of vintage garments
So, how do we get away from “secondhand is dirty?” We talk about how all clothing can be “dirty.” We clean all of our clothes when we purchase them, if we can.
Considering the germs we encounter in our day-to-day lives, pathogens aren’t something you as a vintage shopper or thrifter need to worry too much about with proper care and maintenance of vintage and secondhand clothing.
In The Conversation, Dr. Freestone advised washing all secondhand clothing in hot water set to 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) to squash any germs.
For many contemporary secondhand items made of common fibres, that's good advice. But to best preserve the life of your garment, always check the clothing tag first if available — some items may be dry clean only.
Vintage sellers are a bit more cautious with how to approach garment care.
“Arbitrarily subjecting vintage or even good quality secondhand clothing to very hot wash or steam treatments can often cause irreversible damage,” says Pat.
“Encouraging the destruction of irreplaceable vintage clothing by hot machine washing or corrosive chemical treatments by people who are not familiar with fabric care is totally irresponsible.”
She and other sellers suggest killing off any lingering germs through dry cleaning, careful hand washing, using a home steamer, putting the garment into a freezer, airing out the garment in the hot sun, or spraying the garment with a solution of half water, half vodka if it’s allowed to get wet.
Many clothing sellers wash garments prior to selling, but not all do. “As long as there's transparency to the customer, I don't think that this should be a deterrent to buyers,” Pat says.
“It would be great if more sellers got more familiar with materials identification and care so they can pass this on to their customers.” That’s especially true if the garment has lost its care label over time or has simple markings, such as a wool mark identifying the garment as pure wool — that would indicate it needs to be hand washed.
Clothing seller @itsstellarose, who commented on my Instagram post, agrees that sellers should provide more information for customers when making a sale.
“The older and/or nicer, or cheaper the piece (quality-wise), the trickier it can be to wash,” they said. “Something I’d like to see more sellers doing is proving literacy on how to clean pieces.”
But consumers should also be more curious about what they are buying. “I'd love it if more of my customers were proactive about asking about how to take care of their vintage finds,” says Pat.
A vintage seller is always going to favour proper care of the garment. If you are still nervous about the potential for pathogens on an item that has a care tag indicating it can’t be washed, don’t buy it — but that should be the case whether it’s secondhand or new.
For the rest of us fashion lovers, we’ll follow the care instructions no matter the garment, new or old, and take our (very low) chances.
