There’s a well-known saying that goes; Coughs and sneezes spread diseases.

But what about the other end? Do farts also spread diseases?

Here, a man farted onto agar plates wearing either underpants and jeans or nothing at all.

Bacteria grew on the agar plate that was farted on by the bare bottom, but not the covered bottom.

The bacteria was E.coli, which is commonly found in human faeces.

This means that farts can transmit faecal bacteria, although underpants and trousers provide effective protection by filtering out the bacteria.

Do you want more information?

Background

Coughs and sneezes spread diseases, so a subscriber to this website/podcast posed the question, is the same true for emissions from the bottom?

That is, do farts carry bacteria?

They visited microbiologist Dr. Simon Park at the University of Surrey, UK who devised the experiment below.

Materials and Methods

An (unnamed) man was asked to fart onto agar plates wearing either underpants and jeans or nothing at all (bare bottom). The air emitted from the bottom hits the agar plates and if there’s any bacteria in it, they will land on the agar plates and grow. The number of bacterial colonies can then be countered/compared a few days later.

(Agar is like jelly containing food, sugars, etc. to support bacterial growth).

Results

The plate exposed to the fart from the bare bottom showed a number of colonies of bacteria.

These colonies were identified as E.coli – a common strain of bacteria commonly found in human faeces.

The plate exposed to the fart from the covered bottom showed no bacterial colonies at all.

This indicates that underpants and jeans provide effective protection by filtering out faecal bacteria from farts.

Article

Would filtering farts prevent hospital acquired infections?

The Naked Scientist Website/Podcast, University of Cambridge

(http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/question/3333/)

Keywords

Microbiology, microbiologist, bacteria, germ, E.coli, microbiome, gut, bottom, bum, anus, faeces, fart, flatulence, infection, infectious, disease, transmission, cough, sneeze

Subject

Science, Biology, Microbiology, ST1-11LW, ACSSU211, ST2-11LW, ACSSU073, ST3-11LW, ACSSU094, SC4-14LW, ACSSU111