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How much water does it take to make condoms explode?

Recent British government statistics blame exploding condoms for half of all emergency requests for the morning-after pill.

The Times has investigated if condoms are really to blame for such figures.

They bought obscure-brand, novelty and flavoured condoms from backstreet shops, sleazy clubs, pub vending machines, etc. Then asked an industry safety expert to subject them to the tests which involve stretching and inflating each one to breaking point. FYI, if a condom can hold 18 litres of air before it goes bang, it has passed the European requirements.

All of the condoms went on to hold 28 litres before exploding. Three went beyond the 45-litre mark.

So if the sheaths aren’t guilty of provoking pregnancy scares and sexual-disease transmission, it leaves us with people unable to use them.

Mary Jackson, nurse in Essex, explains that “Alcohol also plays a part; they put them on wrong. Tongue studs cause problems, too. They can rip condoms during oral sex, and dentists tell me that they find bits of ripped plastic trapped in the back of young people’s dental braces."

Melissa Dear, of the Family Planning Association, wants to see compulsory education on sex in schools: “We get people phoning our helpline saying that they wear two condoms at once. Doing that increases the friction and makes the condoms far more likely to break. But that is the level of ignorance we encounter.”

Indeed, knowledge and practice can cut condom catastrophes, according to a research which shows that the breakage rate among regular brothel users was less than 0.6 per cent, compared with a failure rate of about 7 per cent with “amateur” wearers.