How often should you wash your towels?
Is once a week enough to wash your towels? Or, like some, once a month?
Perhaps you should reach for a clean towel daily?
With the pandemic still a recent memory last year saw an unprecedented global rise in over a dozen communicable diseases.
One contributing factor cited by the American Medical Association was hygiene, specifically the role of the humble bathroom towel.
Professor Elizabeth Scott is a professor of biology and co-director of the Simmons University Center for Hygiene & Health in the Home and Community.
The manager of a groundbreaking 1982 study examining the bacteria lurking in hundreds of homes, she filled in Sunday Morning's Jim Mora on the dos and don'ts of our fluffy fibres.
"Every time we use a towel, bacteria are being transferred from our skin to the towel, potentially from our respiratory system if we're coughing and sneezing, potentially from our gastrointestinal system.
"Consider that we touch every single part of our body with a towel."
So how often should we wash our towels?
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The American Cleaning Institute recommends washing your towel after every 3 to 5 uses.
Scott thinks this is overdoing it. Instead, she recommends once a week as a loose rule of thumb.
"In a healthy household where no one's suffering from any infections once a week is okay."
However, this comes with a few caveats.
"In a situation where anybody is suffering from any kind of infection, skin infection, respiratory infection, or gastrointestinal infection, then it's really important for those individuals to have their own towel and for that towel to be washed daily, or even more frequently."
"Anyone who has a skin infection with something like staph aureus, really should not be sharing."
Towels should also be washed at a high temperature and kept thoroughly dry - this is doubly important for those with infections.
"I have seen studies where pathogens have been recovered from fabrics that have been cold, washed, but dried in the sun."
And if you can, avoid hanging your towel near a toilet.
"And there is quite a lot of research going on into the potential contamination of the environment surrounding a toilet when it's flushed.
"There definitely is evidence that the surrounding environment, immediately surrounding the toilet bowl, can get sort of an aerosol splash.
"So the way around that really is to do with the high temperature. That's the best way to eliminate bacteria from towels."
She notes that along with the kitchen sponge, the often overlooked and overshared kitchen towel is also a common source of infection spread.
"In my experience, have their own bath towel, but they tend to share hand towels."
Because while a nasty bug might be merely inconvenient today, many of these common infections are set to have devastating impacts over the coming decades.
"The UK government has signalled that by 2050, some 10 million people around the world will die of infections that cannot be treated any longer because bacteria are so resistant.
"So any way that you can reduce your risk of infection in your own environment is another way of preventing having to use antibiotics.
And above all - remember - wash your hands.
"Washing with soap is the gold standard."
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Secure your homes over summer
Police are reminding people to keep their homes secure during the summer months.
Inspector Glenda Barnaby, Christchurch Area Prevention manager, says daytime burglaries are just as common as nightime burglaries.
“Burglaries can be committed at any time of the day, and coming into warmer months there is more opportunity for thieves."
"Although a majority of burglaries involve forced entry through windows and doors, we are starting to see more incidents at insecure premises. Police deal with cases where burglaries are committed in broad daylight, sometimes even while the victim is at home. Good weather means open doors and windows, which makes homes more vulnerable to burglars.”
Inspector Barnaby says there’s a few things people can do to reduce their changes of a burglary being committed.
⚠️ If you’re going outside for gardening, relaxing in the sun, or working in the garage, take a moment to lock your doors and secure your windows first.
⚠️ Do the same at night when you go to bed - keep your doors and windows secure and close your curtains. Fitting window stays means you can get a breeze coming through, while keeping your windows secure.
⚠️ Get to know your neighbours - let them know if you’re going away and look out for one another.”
If you see any suspicious activity, people or vehicles in your neighbourhood, don't hesitate to contact Police.
If you witness or suspect any illegal activity, please call 111 if it is happening now, or make a report through 105 either online or over the phone, if it is after the fact.
Poll: Are our Kiwi summer holidays helping us recharge, or holding the economy back? ☀️🥝
There’s growing debate about whether New Zealand’s extended Christmas break (and the slowdown that comes with it) affects productivity.
Tracy Watkins has weighed in ... now it’s your turn. What’s your take? 🤔
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72.7% We work hard, we deserve a break!
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16.3% Hmm, maybe?
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11% Yes!
What sectors are barely paying more than minimum wage?
While New Zealand might have about a dozen sectors paying at least a median $100,000 a year, there are almost as many paying barely more than the minimum wage.
Data compiled by Infometrics showed the median and mean salaries across industries throughout the country.
The data does not adjust for hours worked, and some of the workers may not be working a 40-hour week.
But it shows that on an annual basis, many sectors were not delivering incomes that were equal to the minimum wage.
The minimum wage of $23.50 an hour works out to just under $49,000 a year for a full-time, 40-hour a week worker.
Fuel retailing was paying a median of almost exactly the same amount.
Food retailing was paying less, at $45,030. Accommodation was slightly more, at $49,240, and food and beverage services was significantly less at $40,170.
Also within $10,000 of minimum wage were "other store-based retailing" at $53,220, sport and recreation services at $53,350 and personal and other services at $54,170.
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment data last year showed that about 141,900 people would be directly affected by the minimum wage rising to $23.50, indicating they were at that point being paid less than that amount per hour.
Infometrics principal economist Nick Brunsdon said skills and experience explained a lot of the variation in incomes.
"Industries that need a more skilled workforce generally pay more - because they can get a lot of value out of their workers, and workers need a good incentive to gain those skills - for example, medicine. Industries that take in a lot of lower qualified staff, like hospitality, can get away with paying a lot less, and still get plenty of job applicants.
"There are other factors like desirability - some jobs might not have a high skill requirement but are somewhat undesirable - say underground coal mining - so higher pay is necessary to find workers."
CTU policy director and economist Craig Enney said "hours adequacy" was a big problem in many sectors.
"You've got someone who's working 20 hours a week or 25 hours, on $25 an hour, so you're earning $500 a week. Is that enough? No.
"The challenge is often about the structure of employment in some of those sectors…In hospo, in retail, in catering, in a range of other sort of service-based industries, it's wanting more hours and not getting it."
The latest labour market statistics showed the the number of underutilised people in the country had risen to 403,000.
"These are people who want more hours, want more work and can't get it. And that may be a key reason why, you know, total incomes are so inadequate for some people. And that's also partially helping to explain why the headline unemployment rate is not rising as quickly as some people had predicted."
Jake Lilley, a spokesperson for financial mentor network Fincap, said it was something mentors dealt with.
"They also help people work out what is realistic in terms of taking on hours while balancing additional childcare costs. Our latest Voices reporting recorded 31 percent of those supported by a financial mentor as having a mix of income from salary or wages as well as income support.
"It is a real juggle to navigate finances when unpredictable sporadic hours of work need reporting to Work and Income in what can be impractical timeframes. An example might be someone being asked to stay on for a longer shift by their manager and being unable to contact Work and Income when that day is the deadline to report other income.
"Someone might also not know exactly what their pay will be until a payslip is provided after the reporting date. Such situations can often result in overpayment debts from Work and Income compounding the difficulty of administering already tight finances."
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