Shower or bath?...

Yes but they count the tramps who wash once a year in with the rest of them.
That kind of skews the statistics doesnt it?..

227 showers per person per year means on average they shower 2 days out of 3. that's hardly dirty.....
Actually it's more than i do, 2 showers and a sauna a week...

the primary argument against baths is that a bath rarely ends with a clean rinse. - which is supported by the fact that many cultures which tend towards soaking in a tub also have cleansing procedures that precede the soak.

addendum: for me, a bath is not relaxing - primarily because the average American bathtub has an internal dimension in the neighborhood of 4 feet and I have an external dimension in the neighborhood of 6 feet.

If the choice is bath or shower, i choose sauna, with a shower to cool down after

A good finnish, preferably woodstove sauna is amazing for cleaning out pores, no more acne for years.
Bonus points for having a lake or snow for the cooldown, i've been nekkid outside in -30

One argument for baths is that by the time you finish, there is soap mixed in with the water which breaks down more dirt than a shower does. Additionally the flow of water when you get outwill rinse you off. The end result being as clean you get from the shower. Not sure how accurate the line of thinking is.

For me, If I want to get clean, I shower. If I want to relax, I take a hot bath. While not a fan of my current tub, I have found ways of making it work for me.

I have actually been thinking about how to test how clean they make you. First off, you need to define a standard shower and a standard bath. This is my suggestion. Feel free to modify.

Setup
Shower: Turn on water, say 100F. Wet body down. Soap up and rinse off. soap and rinse hair, one final rinse and exit. Towel dry.
Bath. fill tub to overflow drain with 100F water. Get in. Soap and rinse body, soap and rinse hair. splash a final rinse. Exit and towel dry.
Next you need a standard level of dirty-ness. My thought is to take a complete hospital OR grade shower and scrub down first to ensure no extra dirt is coming from outside the test. Next cover the full body with body paint. Record the amount of paint used (lost weight of paint jar?)

Testing Apparatus
Capture the water drained from both the shower bath keeping each test separate. Once the shower or bath is complete, then the water that is drained out is run though a high efficiency filter system to trap all dirt from the test. Dirt is then weighed and recorded.

Testing Procedure
Test subject is cleaned and painted. Then goes though the bath or shower. After complete, also make a visual recorded of how much of the paint they were able to get off. Record that as well as weight of the dirt collected. Repeat the cleaning process and take the other option that was not done previously. Repeat process with other subjects. Compare results.

Thoughts?

In Japan the custom is to wash or shower first then bath. For centuries, Japan has been culture known for its bathing customs and obsession about cleanliness. Spiritual pursuits of purity, hygiene and ritual purification are an important part of Japanese culture. They consider (& I have to agree with them here) that taking a bath before washing to be 'unclean'. They consider hoping into a bath before washing/showering to be basically washing in your own filth! By showering fist you clean yourself & the bath is seen as more about 'relaxing & socialising' rather than getting clean.

If you're interested in learning more about various cultures bathing customs throughout the ages I would suggest looking at this page to learn more.

The History of Bathing Through the Ages.

the victorians were, well, not the original, but the previous legendary conservatives.

actually when I think about it, whatever one calls the ones who transitioned us into the dark ages were the start of that particular round of conservatism.
this is not to say it is universally bad to be conservative. either changing just for the sake of changing, OR refusing to change just for the sake of refusing to change has the potential for less than optimal outcomes.

as us west coast firemen like to say, the east coast has 200 years of tradition unimpeded by modern progress.

If we're going for comparisons in cleanliness, here's a suggestion for a test:

At the beginning of the test, have Adam and Jamie bathe/shower like they normally do, but instead of doing it at home, they do it at the shop. This is to control the amount of dirt they attract during the day. If one of them drives past some road works, eats something messy or something like that after their shower at home, there's a risk of them attracting dust and other stuff before they come into work. We don't want that.

Set up a shower and a bath tub somewhere in or around the shop. The name of the game is weighing the water before and after.

For the shower, they need to start with a grate on top of a funnel that leads to a tank underneath and then build the shower around that. The shower needs to have its own water heater. We want to measure how much water is used.

For the bath tub, find out how much water needs to go in it to create a typical bath for each of the guys. That water can be heated by the same water heater.

Weigh the water before starting a small control test. Run the water through the shower at a set temperature, letting it all trickle into the tank. Weigh the tank. We now know how much of the water we lose to steam during the shower.

Do the same for the bath tub, but this time just pour in the water and let it sit for the amount of time that's been set for a reasonable bath. Weigh it again and we now know how much of the water we lose to steam during the bath.

Adam and Jamie now need to be weighed naked, so that when they step out of the shower/bath, they can step out, still wet, onto a scale, so we know how much of the water they need to dry off and, hence, won't be in the tank/tub when they're done.

Now it's just a matter of weighing each gram of soap used during each test, so we can deduct that from the weight of the water when they're done, and the math to figure out how much dirt is in the water for each test should be a simple matter of:

Weight of water at the beginning minus weight of water lost to steam minus weight of water on the body when you step out of the shower minus weight of soap used = amount of clean water left in tank/tub. Any gram of weight above that number is dirt (and possibly a small amount of hair).

Before each shower/bath, have the guys go through a controlled routine of physical exercise to build up sweat, followed by a predetermined job in the shop where the amount of dirt they'll attract will be fairly consistent. Switch between the two for an 8 hour work day and then shower/bathe.

To test for "stinkyness" after having determined how much dirt is in the water, wait an hour after the shower/bath where the guys don't do anything physical. Watch TV or something. Then, do bacterial swabs in armpits, groin area and between the toes. The one that has the most bacteria afterwards is the least effective in curing "stinkyness".

Thoughts?