How dirty is your Festival Wristband?

Long after the music has faded and your sunburn has started to peel, maybe you’ve kept that festival wristband from Pemberton/Shambhala/whatever on your wrist for a few extra days, or maybe even a few months. Some see it as way to keep the memories alive. Or maybe silently brag that you just spent over $700 at a weekend you probably barely remember because you were drunk the whole time.

Well you might want to take your wristband off for health reasons.

Triple J on YouTube decided to go to a lab and get a microbiologist to find out what exactly it living on your wristband besides fond memories and nostalgia.

They took 3 wristbands from various festivals: Splendour 2016, Groovin The Moo 2010 and Falls 2009 and gave them to Dr. Nick Coleman from the University of Sydney to incubate and then find out what bacteria had started to sprout.

After just three days of incubation the findings were pretty gross!

The 2009 wristband had 200 million bacteria, 2010 had 600 million bacteria and lastly the 2016 wristband had 80,000 bacteria hanging out on it.

Among the traces of skin bacteria and various environmental creepy crawlies they found what could have been Staphylococcus Aureus aka “golden staph” which typically hangs out on your body, but it can lead to boils and impetigo or even more serious afflictions such as meningitis.Yikes. Also, depending on your level of hygiene, there’s also a chance there could be E.Coli on that wristbands. Yeah. . . as in the bacteria you find in feces.

Dr Nick did say that there isn’t any really conclusive evidence that any of this bacteria is dangerous, but just from the sheer number of bacteria hanging out on them, it might be better to keep them in a scrapbook than on your wrist.