Does Clean Laundry Have Germs?
stopthestomachflu.com
stopthestomachflu.com
"If you wash a load of just underwear, there will be about 100 million E. coli in the wash water, and they can be transmitted to the next load of laundry," Gerba said.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/washing-machines-load...
"Bacterial Exchange in Household Washing Machines" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4672060/
After decades of doing my own laundry, I'd never heard of that practice. Well, at least not until recently when I got an HE front loader machine, now I run a bleach cleaning cycle once a month or so to kill odor causing germs. But not to keep germs off my clothes.
More than likely, the reason that you perceive an odor is because your body is trying to keep the germs off. So from an evolutionary standpoint, you are probably running a bleach cycle to keep germs off your clothes.
Front load the damned door smacks you in the shin and you close it. Creating a nice little terrarium to grow stuff in.
I throw a little white vinegar into the prewash every time I launder cotton. Keeps the mildew under control and helps with hard water.
Check out the top load HEs. The Japanese were using that design for a long time.
Here is an experiment whose results I'd pay for. Who to fund it; NIH or NSF? They are always asking for the societal impact of the research to be performed.
What does this mean? Where are the odor causing germs if not on your clothes?
Before that..... NEVER DID IT EVER. I had no clue.
In my experience the newer energy efficent washers/dryers are almost total garbage compared to the older ones. I would love to see this experiment repeated with an older 90's kenmore or whirlpool or really any brand from the 90's or before.
I love the idea of saving energy, and energy efficient laundry sounds like a great idea on the surface, but what I think happened was the government put regulations in place without really considering the actual impact this would have on the quality of the washers/dryers.
Front-loaders are vastly different between the North American market and Europe or Korea. I remember my friend's brand new LG in California would run an eco-friendly cycle in 40 minutes. A similar model in Europe takes 4h30!
That's not true of modern front-load washers. At my old (UK) flat we had an old Beko front-loading clunker. It worked perfectly well but was very noisy and took a long time (not 4 hours though! maybe 1.5 - 2 hours).
At my current place we have a much more modern one where a fast/economy cycle takes 36 minutes. It's nice and quiet too.
Edit: here's an example: http://www.lg.com/uk/washing-machines/lg-FH4A8TDN2#
- 60°C full load 297 minutes
- 60°C partial load 244 minutes
- 40°C partial load 239 minutes
I have no idea why it does that.
I have no idea what the difference between the cotton and the mixed load settings is, but I usually do the shorter cycle if I have a lot of loads to do.
I guess if you're setting it running in the morning and then heading out for the day, 4-5 hours isn't a problem. But often I end up doing all the laundry on one day: clothes as well as towels, bed sheets, etc, in multiple loads, and don't want to be waiting around too long for each load to finish...
Slow wash cycles are more efficient. Loosening the dirt by soaking means that less agitation is required. Manufacturers cheat the mandatory efficiency tests by making the default cycle very slow, but offering faster cycle settings. My washing machine takes nearly four hours for a standard cotton cycle, but has a "speed perfect" button that reduces the wash time to under an hour. I always use the fast setting.
It is, perhaps, a little deceptive if people believe their machines are more efficient than they really are on the commonly used cycles.
The way to solve this would be to improve the efficiency tests so that they test the efficiency of a fast cycle as well as an economy/long cycle.
And for the comparison to be correct you need to compare an eco mode quick wash - normally a light load.
I'm trying to. The standardized annual power consumption that is advertised on the energy rating is only accurate if you use the default settings for 40 and 60°C cotton cycles. And that is effectively 4 hours at 40°C for a partial load. I saw the advertised "turbowash" cycle, however while it's supposed to be energy efficient, you have to take LG's word for it.
In the US, while models differ in size, if you look at a similar price range and load capacity, you'll see that numbers used for the energy rating are pretty similar (around 100 kWh or less). But, to my knowledge, the default cycles are fairly short. Sadly neither Samsung nor LG seem to publish cycle length in their manuals.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
If anyone is looking for ideas on how to make the world a better place, look into figuring out how to shift the culture so that air drying becomes more common. Also composting toilets.
Edit: Drying clothes uses 56 billion kWh of energy in the US.[1] Another related area that needs work is standby power.[2]
[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=96&t=3
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/science/just-how-much-pow...
Socially, improving commuting infrastructure so people waste less gas would easily have a larger benefit and you are not going to fight nearly as hard.
Etc etc, this might be top 50 but it's not a top 10 and it's hard.
People waste so much energy without thinking about it and for reasons that aren't particularly more convenient, like using disposable dishware instead of just rinsing off your plate when you're done. I look around at my peers even here in Mexico and see a shift, like asking for no straw when ordering a michelada.
So focusing on the specific energy usage of dryers begins to sound near-sighted. Nobody suggested that dryers alone cause all waste.
PS: For manufactured products cost is often a reasonable first approximation of environmental impact. When you get 300 paper plates for 2 cents each they really can't take many resources to manufacture. Further, by ending up in a landfill they actually act as a carbon sink.
Washing a few dishes by hand just takes a moment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/23/children-all...
https://www.webmd.com/allergies/news/20150223/could-a-dishwa...
These cycles take longer. AIUI it's to compensate for reduced temperature (saving the bulk of the energy) and reduced water usage.
Though there might be an element of misuse. My machine warns in the manual to do a 60or 90 degree wash with no clothes every couple of months to clean the machine. I suspect most people don’t do this.
As for the driers, if your coloured clothes have that whitish undertone that suggests they've been through a good drying in your drier, then I think you're doing it wrong. I was so disappointed how much my clothes would wear out in the American driers that I'd always make sure to only use them on the lowest setting possible, even for jeans and such. Definitely not missing any old non-HE driers; you're not really supposed to kill the bacteria with the heat of the drying anyways, and using hot water is much more efficient for that.
My washer is sitting next to the kitchen sink and I just manually add a huge load of water every time I turn that damn thing on. I installed a faucet with a hose just for that reason.
Most of the washing machine purchasing decisions must be based on the marketing fluff. I don't think there are many publications even on EU level which run and publish comprehensive tests for these machines. Without such objective tests, it is pretty much impossible to base the purchasing decision on hard facts (except those mandated to be reported by EU).
I remember reading that some washing machines actually did not even obey the request to use high temperatures, because the manufacturer had noticed that they can match the EU target for wash efficiency also with lower temperatures. Can't find any reference for this, so take this with a grain of salt.
[1] http://www.topten.eu/uploads/File/130904_Topten_recommendati...
Cape Town will likely be out of water by July 15.
High efficiency dryers and washers have their place; just maybe not where water is prevalent.
The lack of water meters is a legacy thing. Water companies all over the UK (including the North) are trying to migrate consumers away from unmetered tariffs. For example: https://www.nwl.co.uk/your-home/your-account/considering-a-w...
And in case you think the water companies are just as happy if you're on an unmetered tariff: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/water-m...
The rainy season is starting, and Cape Town is unlikely to run out of water this year. It was touch-and-go until a few months ago, though, and there's still a risk for next year.
None of this is news.
Of course, people used to use actual (chlorine) bleach with laundry more often, rather than colorsafe “bleach”, and chlorine bleach does kill germs, so that's part of what happened.
I've been trying to just use vinegar. Hope it helps.
So, 130F is just under 60C - what's usually the minimum considered to kill bacteria. While I haven't measured the actual temperature, my aging, second hand washer have three "white" programs: "hot" is 90 C, and there are two rated 60C. I'd never assume any of the other programs had a sterilising effect.
If "hot" is just 60C, and often not that - I can see a need to use bleach for some loads (or other means of killing off bacteria) if the norm is to use warm (not hot) water for washing.
Would be interesting to see similar test with just water (no soap, bleach) and a 90C degree program.
I'd guess the results would be "dotted middleground" like many of the test here.
Also would be nice to see how hanging in the sun would effect otherwise clean clothes (airborne bacteria vs uv death ray stand-off - might be meaningless without checking for type of bacteria).
Your machine has longer and shorter programs, my 60C wash takes about 3 hours by default while a quick was is obviously considerably faster.
If you pull hot water from the heater and circulate it around for 30 min, it's not going to be that hot at the end of the cycle.
But that said, it would not be hard to run 240V to washer, so that can't be the reason.
Do Europeans typically heat water with electricity? That might be the reason - if you are anyway using electricity, you might as well let the washer do it.
In the US natural gas water heaters are very common (it's more efficient). And natural gas dryers too.
Modern front-loading washing machines, especially those managing an A or better on the EC's energy rating system, tend to use very little water, though. Depending on the plumbing system, by the time the potential cold water in the hot water pipes had run through, you might not get very much hot water at all before you were done, so you'd have to heat electrically anyway.
Don't do that. You risk legionnaires disease. Set the temperature to at least 140F.
I have a tankless water heater, though. The water won't be at 140F for very long, so I can't imagine it actually killing very much bacteria.
How does water heater temperature below 140F increase the risk of getting legionnaires disease?
Also, I always wash my clothes on warm, never on hot, because I don't want my clothes to shrink.
Many clothes manufacturers also label the clothes they make with directions saying to only wash on warm or cold. Otherwise, presumably, the clothes might get damaged.
At 140F or above it's killed. Around 100F it thrives. It's one of the rare bacteria that do well in hot water, and is naturally found in our water supply (as opposed to exotic locales).
120F is the max recommended hot water temperature in the International Plumbing Code.
And not at the dishwasher or washing machine.
> Far more people get scalded by tap/shower water that is too hot than contract legionnaires by several orders of magnitude.
First of all virtually no one actually sets their tank at 120F.
Second:
"It is estimated that Legionnaires' disease is the cause of between two and nine percent of pneumonia cases that are acquired outside of hospital." [1]
"There are an estimated 8,000 to 18,000 cases a year in the United States that require hospitalization for legionnaires" [1]
"11,028 scald burns in children younger than 3 years old annually." [2]
"8,620 visits per year among Adults Aged ≥65 Years" [3]
I don't have numbers for the full population, but your "several orders of magnitude" is clearly quite off. At best it's a single order of magnitude - and that's only because almost no one actually sets the temperature so low.
If they did the number would swing.
And don't forget the pneumonia rates. This is not some rare unheard of disease.
[1] doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(15)60078-2.
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276065254_Scald_bur...
Speaking of bacteria, another interesting at-home experiment is the one with tea. Not everyone knows, but tea is highly anti-bacterial. If you leave an old tea-bag from milk-free green tea lying around with just enough water to keep it moist for a few days or even a week, the chances of spoilage or mold are extremely low — the water will evaporate faster. (I sometimes didn't throw old tea cups from my desk for weeks, and none of them ever developed anything bad, unless they had something other than the tea, e.g., milk tea will develop mold pretty fast.)
Though germs are a concern, body odor is a very practical reason to always train with clean clothes, and for some people it requires enforcement through peer pressure.
Not all blood pathogens can be killed by traditional disinfectants, even bleach. You need to soak the affected article for 10 minutes with a caustic sterilizer such as Sporicidin or CaviCide (which unlike disinfectants will kill bacterial spores)
No training center I have ever seen cleans their mats this way. Roll at your own risk...
The issue with Staph is that skin-to-skin contact, or the indirect version mediated by a mat, is more than enough for it go to "Yeah, I live here now..."
The open sore is honestly a risk for both - S. aureus loves it some open wounds.
That's just good practice in general, the salt & sweat come out easier when they haven't fully dried yet, and the bacteria won't have as much time to grow their numbers and make the garment permanently smelly.
It would probably be wise for you to increase your washing frequency, nevertheless.
2) also depends on the fabric, but usually you have to be pretty sweaty, at least to the wet-armpits level. Just think of the level where you will be depositing salt on the clothes.
3) Not often.
If you don't want to do laundry right away, you can soak the salty clothes, squeeze them dry, and hang them.
In cases where that's necessary, like hospital linens, a combination of bleach and hot water is used. Most new washing machines now come with a "sanitize" setting that will use a built-in water heater to get to boiling temperatures to clean clothes.
You should also clean your washing machine regularly, using empty cycles and letting it completely dry out. You can't clean much if the cleaning equipment itself is dirty.
But it should wash away the bacteria, right?
That's why hospitals advise doctors and patients to wash their hands with soap, isn't it? It's not like they're under any illusion that soap will kill the bacteria/viruses, but just that it should wash them off.
Fabric is much more porous and absorbs deeply, along with the trouble of being enclosed in a sealed container. No matter how much soap and water is used, it's unlikely to truly wash away the microscopic bacteria trapped within the fibers.
There are some experimental machines using ultrasound to agitate clothing for removing stains, germs and even the water itself for instant drying, but that's not quite production ready.
Is this a real thing? What's the chemistry behind it?
When it comes to stain removal, Crystal Wash does not work any better than hot water. And, when it comes to some important stains, Crystal Wash often works far worse than laundry detergent.
However a 'bio-ceramic' that is supposed to go in your body hopefully isn't coppery or otherwise biocidal
If it's generating peroxide in situ, it won't kill anything until long after it eats up your clothes and nothing can renewably generate that much peroxide or else it would be used for energy, not advertised on infomercials
The first time you use these products, they appear to work--your clothes actually get pretty clean.
This is because your clothes still have enough embedded detergent in them to still be effective.
After a few washes, the detergent is all gone, and your clothes stop getting clean. But you've seen the product "work", and it's hard to change your mind. Eventually you give up but it's been so long that you don't return the product.
Even apart from the results of this experiment, the basic concept of this product sounds really sketchy to me. I'm not going to say that there's no way at all that mere exposure to sunlight could recharge a catalyst that would change the pH when immersed in water, but just about every pH changing process that I know of involves using up some chemical reagent, and exposure to sunlight alone seems unlikely to replenish that sort of resource. So it sounds like snake oil to me.
Do people expect the laundry to actually sanitize clothes? I would think having to option to use cold water is a dead giveaway.
Anyone have a link for a dishwasher test similar to this one?
Always seemed to work just fine, now I'm horrified.
Also, newer detergents contain enzymes which are particularly good at removing biological stains (but do they kill?) In fact, new washing machines also optimize their temperature profile so that they keep the water longer at ~30-40 degrees C, since this is the optimum temperature for enzymes.
Soap creates a colloid with the germs and oils and dirt. Warm water intensifies this effect. All that goes down the drain and becomes somebody else's problem. Which might be good enough most of the time.
Not effective against mold spores, bacteria endospores, worm eggs, higher life forms, really tough bacteria, but soap does kill most bacteria you find in poop
But then what is she culturing on the agar? In the rinse cycle you wouldn’t have much soap left. Maybe something growing on surfaces in the machine? Something that a periodic dose of chlorine kills?
Sanitize fullu no. They (we) do expect it to kill most germs, and kill the odours (which are caused by bacteria in the first place), and clean them.
I wonder if anyone makes a dryer with embedded UV lights, that'd be interesting.
Not that it isn't an accomplishment, but it feels... forced? And not in the way of someone inexperienced with web stuff and proud of their kid.
It has that auto-generated-from-the-previous-contents-of-the-expired-registration domain parking website feel.
Pages go on forever, disorganized navigation, boilerplate explanations duplicated everywhere, very little in the way of charts or tables or summaries, and most of the links about products go to Amazon.
I was baffled she hardly even mentioned the temperature setting, here it is well known that you should run your washer with at least 60C if you want to kill germs.
I have a new dishwasher that takes 3 hours to wash, and I struggle to keep red bacteria from growing all over the place in it. I just did a no-dishes bleach wash this morning. I've never had this problem before.
With bleach you have to make sure you add it to the water at the right time which a malfunctioning dispenser can fail to do (and you might not realize it), but apart from that it works reliably and even with cold water. A "sanitize" setting can get similar results but it depends on the machine; her neighbor's didn't work as well as hers. Unfortunately non-chlorine bleach and "sanitizer" additives do not reliably sanitize.
The obsessiveness of the post can given the impression that this is someone who's a germaphobe, but she actually notes that it's not necessary to kill germs most of the time. She's just motivated to figure out how to effectively sanitize in the cases where you want to do it, like a household illness or cloths used to wipe up raw chicken.
For example, Clorox recommends using 1/2 cup of Clorox regular bleach in laundry. That's 8 tablespoons worth. That's on the low end of what the CDC recommends per gallon of water for disinfecting something that's contaminated with Norovirus (a viral stomach bug especially common in the winter).
Norovirus is also pretty heat stable, though the sanitize setting should get hot enough, though it's not clear if its hot enough for long enough.
Yes, germs are everywhere (surprised?), so what?
First, you can't bleach all you house.
Second, even if you could, why do that? Our body seems to fight nasty stuff pretty well. If you have some specific condition or disease, then just take targeted measures.
>If you have some specific condition or disease, then just take targeted measures
Did you even read the article? That's exactly what she says she is doing. When there's a stomach flu or other harmful bug going through the household, she is using targeted washing methods to rid those germs.
Sorry, but this just seems like OCD disguised by a bit of science.
Then, if you already have stomach flu, then I don't see how bleaching your clothes might help here. Take a medicine.
Finally, reading about stomach flu (I'm not a doctor), it doesn't look like a serious problem: > Most people with the stomach flu require no formal treatment. The key to a rapid and safe recovery at home (home remedy) is proper hydration.
If it gets more serious then take a pill or/and go to a doctor.
imagine a house with small children (who are not good at personal hygiene) as a tiny cruise ship which you can never fully disembark, and then when the cooking/cleaning staff (parents) get sick, things get really ugly.
it's generally easier to clean the hard surfaces in your house (with harsh stuff like bleach wipes) than to clean the soft surfaces. that's presumably why she focuses on the laundry infection vector.
If you are high school student who dont like to go to school, getting sick is fine. If you are anybody else, you want to avoid it even if it does not require formal treatment.
And given there's not "a pill" you can take for it, I don't see how a couple capfulls of bleach is more problematic.
And laundry as a source of transmission is pretty well known in infectious disease epidemiology. One of the biggest issues is not that people get it from clothing, but that the person who handles contaminated clothing is also quite likely to be the person who preps food. Norovirus only needs a very small number of viral particles to make you sick, and a kid sick on either end is shedding a lot of virus.
And while yes, you should, multiple different pathways to reducing your fomite exposure are better than relying on a single point of failure.
"Many people are confused and think that I want to kill all the germs in the world. This is not true. There is good bacteria in our bodies and our environment that is extremely important. I consider myself a "norophobe" and not a "germaphobe". " -- http://www.stopthestomachflu.com/about-the-scientist#TOC-My-....
because in my experience, kids get sick again and again, sometimes it takes a month to get through the cycle
(The only exception I know of is HIV: this virus fools your immune system)
That's why things like that are pushed so heavily.
The problem with washing machines is they are devices that are rather difficult to disinfect. If you were to take a brand new washer, as in never had water ran through it, you would probably see a drastic reduction in her results. However, after a few uses bacteria from the air, cloths, water, and other sources will eventually end up in the system. If the system is not vented, then wet spots will exist throughout each washing cycle carrying with it any bacteria.
With that said, what I am suggesting is the washing machine is the culprit for bacteria from city water, which is not 100% bacteria free. Add in the fact that High-Efficiency washers use substantially less water then older units, and you have a perfect bacterial soup machine. Older machines used more water, which allowed for further dilution and flushing.
Would the situation be the same if the water was 100% free of bacteria with a brand new washer that would be dried completely after each use?
Free of pathogens, maybe. Free of bacteria? Not even a little bit. Especially once it's traveled through household plumbing.
She has another article on that:
A glass window filters out almost all of the UVA spectrum, but you can buy a UVA lamp if you want to disinfect the surface of some item indoors. (DO NOT USE THIS LAMP ON YOURSELF). As an example, The SteriPEN uses a UVA lamp to sterilize water, but needs to be on for a sufficient amount of time as the water is agitated.
edit I'm an idiot, the SteriPEN uses UV-C, which doesn't even get through our atmosphere. UV-A and UV-B do get through and do affect organisms. Here's a paper on the SteriPEN: https://www.travelmedicinejournal.com/article/S1477-8939(15)...
The best thing about making alternative household products yourself with essential oils is that you at least know exactly what’s in them. If you look at the ingredient list for even a bottle of simple shampoo, there might be dozens of ingredients with names that you could hardly pronounce—whereas with DIY products, there might be five ingredients, all of which you know are safe for your body, your children, your pets, etc."
Yeah, what a bunch of bullshit.
By the way, the blogger is a PhD in biochemistry. You're not going to win a science battle with her.
Please post a meta analysis from the Cochrane Collab. That's a source that doctors use.
> By the way, the blogger is a PhD in biochemistry. You're not going to win a science battle with her.
Arguments stand on merits. There are plenty of professionals in their respective fields that advocate pseudoscience.
I think essential oils smell good, so I add a drop or two to my homemade cleaners or hair products for example. Not everyone uses them for homeopathy.
EDIT: Here she is hedging her experiment, she seems properly cautious: "I can't be certain if the product is actually killing the bacteria or if it has just somehow stopped the bacteria from growing. I also can't tell how long it takes to kill the bacteria since the product is picked up on the swab and remains with the bacteria on the agar plate during the entire incubation time."
http://www.stopthestomachflu.com/do-essential-oils-like-thie...
I understand authority-crisis, but does this invalidate her other findings? (Can you enjoy Ender's Game even though Orson Scott Card is a fucking weirdo?)
Maybe get this "skeptic radar" checked.
There’s really no recommendation for a specific brand except the norwex+lysol combo, which she wasn’t able to explain why it worked.
The people exposed to the dirtiest conditions as children are perhaps the least vulnerable in their adult lives. Excessively clean conditions are a problem.
Maybe. But for those of us around immuno-compromised people, this kind of data is good.
Am I going to worry about standard dirty clothes? Meh. Not really.
Am I going to pay more attention when someone is sick and I have to do their laundry? Yes.