Question corner: Wet clothes
In the rainy season, clothes, when not dried properly, start stinking. Why?
Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh
Many species of plant and animal kingdoms besides those that belong to
neither of these two kingdoms (such as bacteria) release their spores
and fertilized eggs into the environment as part of their reproductive
phase of life. Normally, these spores or eggs are released some time
before the monsoons waiting for a ripe opportunity to hatch, germinate
or multiply.
Such spores and encapsulated eggs (also known as cysts), in abundance,
either stay put in the layers of dry soil or keep floating like other
dust particles in the atmosphere. Once rainy season advents, the spores
and cysts are ready to hatch as the humidity, temperature and other
physical conditions are poised well.
Though the spores and cysts are in a state of suspended animation,
hardly requiring any nutrients, respiration and other physiological
processes such as metabolism and growth, the hatched ones are like any
other living beings engaged in all kinds of biological processes.
Hence, they do need habitats. The fibrous fabric of the clothes which
are not dried properly, come very handy as grounds of attachments for
the stability (by anchoring), sustenance, survival and growth of the
colonies of the hatched spores and cysts.
The wetness of such clothes meets the water requirement of their
physiology whereas the fabric enables them have access to the
atmospheric oxygen. The dirt on the clothes, the dusty particles in the
atmosphere and the dissolved chemical traces in the wetness of the
clothes would provide other material needs of the growing colonies. In
other words, the improperly dried clothes are living worlds of
microscopic life forms. As part of their physiology, these organisms
also excrete wastes which contribute to part of the stinking.
As these monocellular (single cell organisms) and oligocellular (species
with limited number of cell aggregates) are growing, their predators in
the atmosphere also feed on them leaving microscopic lumps of
nitrogenous, thiolic (sulfur based) and phosphorous substances that add
more to the stinking.
Clothes which are dried properly would not provide many of the material
and physical conditions adequately to the microorganisms for hatching or
for survival. Hence, such clothes do not stink that obviously, as the
water content, which otherwise serves as medium of material supply,
temperature regulator, protective cover, etc, is missing. In seasons
other than rainy reason, the spores and cysts are not that populous and
abundant in the atmosphere to make use of these features of wet clothes.
Prof. A. Ramachanraiah
Editor, Vidyarthi Chekumuki
Jana Vignana Vedika, Andhra Pradesh
Keywords: Question corner, germination
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