Can you handle the dirty truth about wet wipes?

How often do you use wet wipes? Photo / Thinkstock

Another day, another piece of evidence that proves wet wipes are the work of the devil, writes Harry Wallop.

A study by Cardiff University found that the cleaning tissues are helping to spread deadly superbugs in NHS wards. Seven commercially available wipes were tested on the most common hospital infections, including MRSA and C. difficile.

In "every instance", the wipes actually spread potentially deadly infections from one surface to another, researchers said. They went on to warn that consumers who used them in their own homes, especially the bathroom, might as well go around spraying raw Campylobacter directly into their children's eyes. I exaggerate only a little.

This is the latest in a long line of horror stories about wipes, which are responsible for the bulk of Thames Water's bill to unblock drains. "It doesn't matter if they say the wipes are flushable," says Sarah Sharpe at Thames. "They float along in the sewer until they find a piece of fat, wrap about that fat, and then slowly attract more fat. Then you get fatbergs." These are the vilest byproduct of a wasteful consumer society: vast lumps of congealed cooking fat, held together by millions of used baby wipes.

Last year, the utility company found a fatberg the length of a Boeing 747 beneath Shepherd's Bush in west London. I apologise if you are reading this while you eat. Perhaps you might want to refresh your mouth with a daily dental xylitol wipe.

You see, there are wipes for all occasions. Indeed, for all their downsides - too numerous to list here - wet wipes have become one of the most astonishing commercial success stories of recent years. One in five of us carry around - at all times - some form of wipe, according to Mintel. Not just parents with a sticky toddler in tow, but adults who can not bear to be "unfresh" for more than a few minutes.

Back in the 80s, the only time you spotted a lemon-scented wipette was alongside the salt and pepper sachets in your aeroplane cutlery set - in an era when passengers were allowed metal knives and forks to eat their reheated chicken chasseur.

Babies' bottoms, meanwhile, were wiped with cotton wool and water, and their mouths with anything to hand. Usually a handkerchief and some parental licking.

Though my mother still takes a clean, wet J-cloth sealed in a plastic sandwich bag on picnic, according to Euromonitor, the market research company, the global "wipe industry" is now worth about $7 billion a year. That equates to an astonishing 578 billion wipes - or about 80 for every man, woman and child on the planet. Crucially, the market has rocketed by 30 per cent in the last five years.

Now, there are nail polish remover pads, pain relief towelettes, wipes for "freshening intimate areas" and, most disturbing of all, Dude Wipes, created by a bunch of men from Chicago "specifically for the adult male market".

Growing fastest, is the antibacterial "surface wipe" market. They are the Japanese knotweed of cleaning products, now found under at least half the kitchen sinks in the country.

These are the ones under fire in the Cardiff University report. But it's worth pointing out that the wipes themselves are not to blame, rather our use of them. If you wipe the same cloth on many surfaces, you will, of course, spread germs. The same is true of an old-fashioned mop and bucket. If you don't change the water, bugs will just be sloshed from one corner of the room to another.

I am moderately convinced that nearly all wipes are utterly unnecessary to the functioning of civilisation. Worse, they breed an unhealthy paranoia about bacteria, which of course is a brilliant marketing tactic to sell more product.

But mock all you like, and rail against the terrible effect on the environment, the wipe - in all its forms - has only succeeded because it is astonishingly convenient. Find me a family that can survive a day trip without a pack of wipes.

We are, unlike our grandparents, a society on the move. Being able to wash hands, mouths and other areas without running water and a stack of flannels is an improvement on what went before. Clearing up the results of a child and their stomach bug is easier, quicker and less messy with a few antibacterial wipes than a bucket and mop.

Just don't flush them down the loo.