After years in stinking exile, your shoes may soon be allowed in from the garage if a new fumigating shoe box is commercially adopted.

Professor Nigel Benjamin and his student Robin Gilbert of the Clinical Pharmacology unit at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London have developed a shoe box which bathes the offensive footwear in germ killing nitric oxide gas.

Boffin weekly New Scientist has the full story, but it’s been patented and now they’re looking for a commercial buyer. Surely the next step is to develop a matching foot spa?