We get it. Your wristband is the last thing that physically ties you to the memories of your favorite festival after you leave it. Cutting it loose from your arm officially terminates the experience. Your arm will never be the same after what it went through the previous several days. But still, are these reasons to keep them on for several days/weeks/months/years after the fact? Some say they are worth wearing for conversation starters. But are they really?

The answer is a resounding no. Your beloved wristbands are also a breeding environment for several types of bacteria, and contain more than twenty times the bacteria than clothes. Take a moment to imagine what those bracelets have actually gone through, not just at the festival, but also in your everyday life. Gross.

Microbiologist Dr. Allison Cottell urges that you take them off immediately. In studying two wristbands that one person had been wearing for two years, she found there to be around 9,000 micrococci and 2,000 staphylococci bacteria on them – that is disgusting.

While you might not be guilty of wearing them that long, your skin still accumulates an astounding amount of bacteria from wearing anything longer than a day or two. Furthermore, those bacteria can cause infections and other nasty diseases.

Think about it. What if you never took off your socks?

Dr Cottell explains: “Although these bacteria are normally found on the skin there was a surprisingly high number growing from the wristbands. A rough ballpark figure would be that the amount of bacteria that grew on wristbands was about 20 times higher than you would expect to find on the sleeve of a piece of clothing that would be regularly laundered.”

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