Science Questions

Can you catch foot odour?

Can you catch foot odour? John Chapman

Kat - Foot odour is primarily due to the bacteria that live just around your feet. If you've got sweaty feet, if you don't keep them clean you're going to have a massive build-up of bacteria. Technically if you rubbed your feet you would transfer the bacteria but then they would need to have the right conditions like sweaty, dirty feet. One thing that can make your feet smell a bit is having athlete's foot. That is a fungal infection and you can catch that. You can pick it up in changing rooms, you can pick it up by rubbing your feet against someone's who's got it. That might make your feet a bit whiffy and you could catch that.

Dave - Would different bacteria smell different? Maybe you can catch a different set of smelly bacteria off someone else?

Kat - Different bacteria do have different smells. There's all kinds of bacteria in the world that have different properties and it's all about the gases that they produce that make you smell. They may react differently on your skin if you have different levels of things in your sweat. I don't want to talk about this any longer!

Chris - A few foot-related facts. Your feet actually squirt a litre-and-a-half of sweat into your socks every 24 hours. You're shedding something like 40,000 skin cells every minute or so over a lifetime that adds up to one-and-a-half stone of dead skin. If you take the surface area of your body and feet are a proportion, that's a lot of dead skin just off your feet. If your feet are stewing in a nice sweaty pair of trainers that don't allow them to breathe what you've got is bacteria, warm, wet and food and that's what causes the bacterial banquet that makes the smelliness.

Kat - Wash your feet, change your socks.

March 2009