A microbiologist has gone viral on TikTok revealing the stomach-churning amount of bacteria lurking on swimwear hygiene stickers.
Nicholas Aicher, who works as a senior quality control analyst, regularly shares clips of himself testing the cleanliness of various everyday items with his 450,000 followers.
The expert swabs things to test for bacterial growth, incubates the samples in petri dishes and then sees how much bacteria shows up.
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In one clip – which is particularly pertinent as the weather heats up – he garnered 5.6 million views showing how much bacteria is on the hygiene seal of swimwear.
“I thought it would be fun for people to know all the little nastiness that we don’t think about every day,” the Chicago-based content creator told What’s The Jam of why he shares his experiments online.
Taking to TikTok to share footage of his test, Nicholas posed the question “How dirty are the swimsuits you try before you buy?”.
He swabbed the hygiene sticker lining the bottom of two different bikini pants, and transported them carefully home in containers.
He can then be seen labelling petri dishes – one of them for the orange swimsuit, and the other for the brown.
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Nicholas uses the relevant swab to transfer the sample onto the petri dish, before placing them in his incubator.
It is unclear how long he leaves them to develop, but the results speak for themselves.
The petri dish containing the sample from the orange swimsuit has a high and visible amount of growth, which Nicholas identifies as Staphylococcus – a common type of bacteria found on humans.
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Meanwhile the brown swimsuit’s petri dish has significantly less visible growth, though Nicholas points out it has “smaller pin-prick colonies” of the bacteria.
The post garnered over 210,000 likes, with one person commenting: “This is why I don’t even try them on and just buy and wash it hoping it’s a good fit.”
“If I go swim suit shopping, I always wear tight fitted leggings because of this,” said another viewer.
Someone else wrote: “Been saying this forever. If trying on, always try on over clothing! Always wash once or twice before wearing directly on skin!”
“You make my anxiety worse but also better because you confirm I’m not actually insane & germs are on everything,” another user joked.
One viewer commented: “Just washed all my new bikinis the other day. Glad I knew they’d need it!”
“I used to work in returns for an online retailer-I cannot stress enough to ALWAYS check the crotch & crack of things before trying them on,” another user wrote.
Someone else added: “I legit never understood how those helped hygiene if they never change them out.”
Nicholas previously made headlines after testing out the infamous ‘five second rule’ – testing how much bacteria grew on food after it had been dropped on the floor for various amounts of time.
Showing the sample for under one second, in which Nicholas briefly touched it to the ground, he says: “Looks like even 0 seconds is too long.”
But interestingly, the sample held down for five seconds appears to have roughly the same amount of bacteria – essentially proving the ‘five second rule’.
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