NYT jumps on our smelly old 'I don't use soap' bandwagon

splash

Sean Bonner writing for Boing Boing, 2011: "I haven't used soap or shampoo in a year, and it's awesome: a personal experiment." NYT, 2014: "My No-Soap, No-Shampoo, Bacteria-Rich Hygiene Experiment."

Okay, okay, to be fair, the New York Times article is about AOBiome, a biotech startup run by MIT-ers out of Cambridge, Massachussetts. And there's a helluva pull quote: "The M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+ has not showered for the past 12 years." He beat Sean Bonner!

Snip:

The tonic looks, feels and tastes like water, but each spray bottle of AO+ Refreshing Cosmetic Mist contains billions of cultivated Nitrosomonas eutropha, an ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) that is most commonly found in dirt and untreated water. AOBiome scientists hypothesize that it once lived happily on us too — before we started washing it away with soap and shampoo — acting as a built-in cleanser, deodorant, anti-inflammatory and immune booster by feeding on the ammonia in our sweat and converting it into nitrite and nitric oxide.

http://youtu.be/Edj7l-P47iI