How Filthy Is Your Beard?
A cost-benefit analysis of manliness and microbiology
By Olga Khazan in The Atlantic
Journalism is, at its core, a public
service. This is why several days ago the reporters at Action 7 News
in Albuquerque, New Mexico, decided to investigate just what, exactly, teems
within the beards of the polity. They swabbed the whiskers of a handful of
local men and took the results to Quest Diagnostics.
The results were the kind that
medical labs don't leave on your answering machine:
Several of the beards that were
tested contained a lot of normal bacteria, but some were comparable to toilets.
“Those are the types of things you'd
find in (fecal matter),” Golobic said, referring to the tests.
Even though some of the bacteria
won’t lead to illness, Golobic said it’s still a little concerning.
But are these results typical? Are
they limited to these few unfortunate Albuquerqueans? Or is kissing a bearded
man the bacterial equivalent of directly applying a sample lipstick that's
chained to the makeup display at Target?
Some doctors have suggested that
beard hair can be a bristly breeding ground for germs. “Beard hair; it’s
coarser. It has the shape of a bayonet, a round, convexed bottom and then comes
up the side to a point,” Carol Walker, a consultant trichologist at Birmingham
Trichology Centre, told the U.K.'s Daily Mail. “The cuticles on the hair—which are like layers of tiles
on a roof—trap the germs and grease."
In 1967, scientists sprayed bearded
and clean-shaven men with bacteria, then tried to collect the bacteria from
their faces (by swabbing, stroking, and imprinting ... oh my). They found that
beards harbored more "more bacteria in general, the clean shaven men
always had less bacteria recovered from their faces than the bearded men,
suggesting that 'that bacteria hold more tenaciously to the beard than to the
face,'" as Scientopia noted.
Then, in 2000, another study found
that when 10 bearded and 10 clean-shaven men wore surgical masks, the bearded
ones shed significantly more bacteria onto agar plates below their
lips—especially if they "wiggled" the masks. The study authors
recommended that bearded surgeons try not to wiggle their face masks.
"Bearded males may also consider removing their beards," they added
joylessly.
Still, the Quest worker from the
Albuquerque news spot only said that beards harbor the types of bacteria you'd
typically find in the gut—and thus, in poop. But other parts of the skin can
also sometimes be contaminated with these bugs. Reportedly, there's about a one in six chance that your iPhone is home to poop particles. All of
this led the Guardian's Nick Evershed to
conclude, "There is more crap in these stories about poo in beards than
there is in beards."
Still, there probably is some truth
to the idea that a beard, like any other body part, can get pretty funky if you
let it. The Albuquerque story might discourage some would-be beard-bearers,
which is a shame, because beards are so hot right now. Matthew McConaughey has one,
for cryin' in the mud. Beards are the perfect way to say, "I don't care
about society!" while simultaneously saying "I care enough that every
few days I will ransack the bathroom in search of the right electric-razor
attachment, and then spend many minutes trimming my beard and determining its
borders." Beard is the new black.
To men who decide, in the face of
this Albuquerque news, to embrace their chin curtains, I offer my applause. I
also offer the recommendation of a nice beard wash,
which will sanitize that stubble in no time.
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