Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids
sciencedirect.comFrom my understanding, this article is only about professional dishwashers used in restaurants and hotels etc. that use much higher concentrations and less rinsing than consumer dishwashers. They specifically mention that they could not repeat their findings on consumer dishwashers.
Yes but isn't this even worse? I can control what I use at home. I can't when I eat or drink out.
So I get to pick between PFAS soaked throwaway single use cardboard cups or epithelial barrier damaging glass/ceramic ware.
There's a lesson in that first few sentences. Of course eating out is risky as it's a black box where you get food for putting money in it. You're not guaranteed quality or safety in the more subtle sense
I have to disagree, a person should be (and, at least to an extent is) guaranteed safety when dining out. Food safety regulations serve this purpose. They are probably not sufficient, admittedly, and ought to be updated to address such concerns as this paper raises, but every so often it impresses me that we have found a way for total strangers to create a thing that you voluntarily ingest without a second thought. We've accomplished an pretty astonishing modicum of safety and thereby trust in food service.
Your statement is different in that it contains a "should":
The reason food safety regulations exist and are much stricter than what you need to apply at home is partly because it affects people at scale, and partly because individuals have no control of it.
So exactly because dining out can be unsafe, food safety should be strictly regulated ("guaranteed").
It seems that the disagreement is mostly how many expectations someone can put into a "guarantee".
> We've accomplished an pretty astonishing modicum of safety and thereby trust in food service.
I completely agree. But I also want to add that it's an unstable equilibrium:
Some years apart you get some scandal where someone kept meat mostly frozen for 30 years.
Some people don’t understand that there are the letter and spirit of the law, and then there are the application and enforcement, and there is some flux in the middle of it all. People are imperfect, and people are the ones washing dishes, preparing food, and enforcing the health code. Things slip through the cracks at a nonzero rate.
If that bothers you, you just have to remember the old adage: “if you want something done right, diy.”
So far, to my knowledge, I've gotten food poisoning from something I cooked for myself exactly once, and that's because my 12 year old dumbass brain thought microwaving a steak for a few minutes was a valid was a valid way to cook it
Almost every time I've actually gotten sick from food has been eating out. I've also seen some close calls like when my fiancee was served 'rare' pork... Which isn't a culinary thing.
Rare pork is most certainly a thing! You are missing out.
The scare of pork is the risk of trichinella. To such such a degree that some speculate that is why Muslims have codified it as haram.
Trichinella is practically non-existant in domestic pigs in EU due to regulation/industry.
In the US you should take more care. You should however remember that cooking food safely is not a magic temperature but a function of temperature and time. The threshold for pork is then 63C because mostly everything unwanted is dead at that temperature.
But if you keep it at a lower temperature but for a longer time you will have the same effect. An easy way to do this is using "sous vide". Simply put a water bath at a constant temperature. This has the advantage that if you vacuum your meat it can go into the water straight from the freezer without defrosting first. I usually add one hour to the sous vide time to allow for defrosting time.
So I usually sous vide pork chops (from the neck) at 54C for some hours and then pan sear to finish the crust. With quality pork I honestly find this superior to a regular bovine steak!
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinella https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety
Exactly. It is surprisingly hard to give yourself food poisoning if you cook for yourself.
On the other hand, like you, essentially every food poisoning I've had was dining out. Suburbs with lax food safety enforcement, city with some of the most rigorous inspection regimes in the country, wherever.
Once my wife & I both got food poisoning ordering completely different food, as though the entire food station was contaminated.
> It is surprisingly hard to give yourself food poisoning if you cook for yourself.
It's not hard at all if you're cooking chicken. All it can take is reusing the cutting board without washing.
If you're careful about it, it's hard. But plenty of people aren't careful. They think the risk is "overblown", they assume salmonella in chicken is as rare as salmonella in eggs.
This makes it pretty easy. And then they think they caught a stomach flu or something.
At that point why not just lick raw chicken? I mean if you stick your finger in an electric socket you'll get hurt too.
Just suggesting a basic level of hygiene.
Because there is a chance you don’t get sick because the particular chicken was not carrying the disease and even then, the cause and effect are split by some time. Whereas getting shocked by sticking something metal in a socket is almost a given and has a very short feedback loop.
I mean, I'm not disagreeing.
Just saying that it's not hard to do. That's all.
It actually is “stomach flu”, because that's the common name for gastroenteritis, even though it's not related to influenza.
It's extremely common to get food poisoning at home, and for many people/cases it is indistinguishable from the flu.
Who separates meats in their fridge and on their cutting boards, dates the opening times of items, etc? Similarly, a home dishwasher doesn't actually sterilize anything, which is why its safer AFA chemicals. It's just providing the hope that small doses of something you've already interacted with won't cause sickness.
But once you've been sick from some contamination you won't really notice it, but guests might. Some restaurants run the same way as typical homes, and will be universally contaminated and someone who eats out regularly with variety is going to have similar consequences to being a guest in houses all over town..
Everyone I've ever known? Who doesn't separate meat in their fridge, and who's keeping so much in there at one time that this is a problem?
Dating opening times is going too far IMO: if it's open, and longer then 7 days in the fridge you toss it. Which is to say, if you can't remember when you opened it, that's also a good sign not to eat it.
It's not like any of this is hard to do.
Although this:
> a home dishwasher doesn't actually sterilize anything,
is not really a statement on anything. "Sterilize" is a very specific term which means you did a process which is guaranteed to kill extant micro-organisms and viruses. But the reason hand-washing is so effective at preventing disease is that it doesn't necessarily kill them, but soap will wash them off surfaces very effectively. They're still alive, but they're in the sewer. Commercial dish washers aren't designed to sterilize either - they're designed to get things clean as fast as conceivably possible (i.e. single digit minutes, not hours).
The converse of this is the problem with old rice: reheating rice is periless, because while it will kill the bacterial contamination, the toxins remain and that's what will make you feel sick if you eat it.
Also restaurant vs home cooking is like a classic principal agent problem.
If I don't want to get sick, I store stuff reasonably, sniff before cooking, and don't hold things past date/days open.
A restaurant wanting to make money is incentivized against being "better safe than sorry" on throwing away stuff rather than serving it. They care more about complying with the letter of the law with respect to passing health inspections well enough. If they occasionally get someone sick, its not always probable that the customer attributes it back to them, and still.. may return anyway.
For the "you get food poisoning at home all the time and don't know it / its just like flu" crowd.. I'd argue you maybe have not had the most severe, rapid onset forms that you can get from a restaurant.
> For the "you get food poisoning at home all the time and don't know it / its just like flu" crowd.. I'd argue you maybe have not had the most severe, rapid onset forms that you can get from a restaurant.
People who have had botulism know that isn't real food poisoning..
> if it's open, and longer then 7 days in the fridge you toss it
I hope you don't strictly follow that rule or you'll throw away loads of absolutely edible stuff. Pickles, ketchup, mustard, jams, ... Yoghurt is often still fine after a week. My thing of miso has been open for months.
I mean yeah, you adjust for perishiability. The stuff you list is already preserved though is the thing ('cept mustard, though I did eventually discover that Hot English Mustard loses it's kick after 1.5 years after the jar is open).
Anything you'd normally consider to need to be refrigerated though starts from the "when did you open it" sort of consideration though - meat and vegetables both have about a 1 week timer on them in my experience (though you'll usually know by smell in advance). But "smells okay" isn't a chance I'm going to take unless I'm in a survival situation - and you need to buy groceries weekly anyway.
What helps a ton is having a cheap chest freezer though - they're much more efficient on power, and you can store a ton of stuff in there for ages and just defrost as you go.
I throw out food when it is bad, not based on some arbitrary timer.
I do too and I have an upset stomach sometimes.. I note and try to adjust, since I'm not going to throw out virtually everything I buy to be 100% safe at the cost of absurd food waste. The point of health inspectors, etc, is that we can't take all the same kind of risks in a high volume kitchen.
I don't understand why the idea that an average person gives themselves food poisoning often is rocket science here.
You may have a illness or disease if you frequently get stomach aches. That isn't typical, talk to your doctor.
Thanks, but that isn't really normalized to anything.. The average American should get food poisoning every 7 years (48 million a year) and I have an upset stomach I would associate with at least one food risk in the 12 hours prior more like yearly, but I rarely get flu level sick, even from a flu, certainly not in an average 7 year period.
I think most people simply haven't looked into food safety material enough to integrate a probability that they had a food related factor when they feel sick and therefore conclude that they have no food risks in their daily habits that would equate to a small risk of a major health incident in a centralized kitchen, etc.
> Similarly, a home dishwasher doesn't actually sterilize anything
What do you consider to be sterilization? Even my old dishwasher, which was made in 2002, has a sani-rinse option that adds a 10 minute rinse with 160℉ (71℃) water which the manual says satisfies the NSF Protocol P153 for sanitizing in household spray-type dishwashers. Unfortunately I can't find a free copy of NSF Protocol P153 to see what that actually accomplishes.
Looking at a few dishwashers that I'd consider to replace mine when it eventually breaks--and I'm a cheapskate so that basically means what I can find at Home Depot or Lowes or Best Buy in the $500-800 range rather--it looks like sanitizing or high temperature cycles are still common, although nowadays what they are saying they meet is "NSF/ANSI 184: Residential Dishwashers" [1].
That requires a minimum 5-log (99.999%) reduction of bacteria and a final rinse temperature of at least 150℉. The 5-log bacteria reduction is only required if you run the sanitizing cycle.
For commercial dishwashers the required reduction in bacteria is the same, although they are required to reach at least 165℉ rinse if they are stationary rack single-temp dishwashers or 180℉ otherwise. For commercial dishwashers the 5-log reduction is required on the regular cycles.
[1] https://www.nsf.org/consumer-resources/articles/dishwasher-c...
Many posts here about sterilization seem to focus on the temperature.
Yes, having a dishwasher program that thoroughly rinses at 90 °C for 10 minutes will kill most germs in there.
I think this leaves out a very important aspect: how you use your dishwasher has a big impact.
I claim that programs at significantly lower maximum temperatures (say 50 °C) can be safely used as long as people are careful about (a) the state of the items they put in their dishwasher and (b) how they position the items.
If you put in items with lots of and/or big food scraps on them you increase the risk of some of the material being left in some sieve or getting caught in the tray. All material that's left for the final rinse will populate the water with some particles which then cover all items.
Same with dried crusts that only get soaked but not removed by the program.
And also the same with items that are inapropriately positioned, so that food residues aren't reached by the water jets, or so they topple over and fill with water which then also spoils the final rinse.
I'd bet if you reliably prevent the above mentioned things from happening by being careful about which items you put in and how you position them, you can use a low temperature program without any risk at all.
> has a sani-rinse option that adds a 10 minute rinse with 160℉ (71℃) water
And everyone who owns that model uses that option every time? For the industry washers there's probably less options to bypass sanitation.
It's merely statistical matters that make it less relevant how often people insufficiently sanitize at home. If some are actually immuno compromised and kill themselves that's still nothing like single Burger joint to a public health policy.
(I seem to have triggered the HN "everyone has my current OCDs and doesn't behave like my college roommates" on this thread.)
We separate meats and cutting boards. The ones who were used for meat are being washed very carefully with lots of chemicals and hot water. Dishwasher runs at 65 degree Celsius. That’s enough for disinfection in my books. Plus cleaning with chlorine every 3 months. We have only couple things open in the fridge and don’t keep them for long. That means if pesto is open we eat noodles more often. There is no rocket science in keeping home kitchen in good shape.
Don’t let me start with a stories from a friend who worked as an interim manager at Burger King. It’s scary! But even worse are smaller industrial kitchens without strong control from state and franchise representatives.
Exactly, its not hard to control this at home.
Not to mention that the rate of failure of restaurants implies the probability that any given restaurant is in some amount of financial strain and maybe pushing the limits on ingredient freshness & cleaning standards...
> Plus cleaning with chlorine every 3 months
Isn't bacteria growth exponential (up until you reach the maximum number that your environment can support)? And don't they often have insane doubling times (something like 20 minutes for salmonella and e. coli)?
Given that I'd wonder if cleaning every 3 months actually makes much difference, except for maybe a couple days right after you clean. Past that any that were missed in the cleaning will have repopulated back to whatever levels they were before the cleaning.
> And don't they often have insane doubling times (something like 20 minutes for salmonella and e. coli)?
Such values are AFAIK under ideal conditions, usually meaning on a wet surface or submerged in a watery/damp environment at a mild temperature, with sufficient nutrients .. not really how most people store things like chopping boards or other kitchen equipment.
I guess, you might be right on this. But we also check the smell. Normally there is nothing special with dishwasher we got new and are taking care of. Used washing machine on other hand has ugly smell again days after chlorine cleaning.
>It's extremely common to get food poisoning at home.
What does that mean to you? That it will happen to an individual multiple times a year? That it will occur in a large city a few times a year?
The risk is hugely overblown in my opinion.
Home dishes don't need to be sterile, they just need food and grease removed.
> What does that mean to you?
There are 48 million cases for 350 million Americans a year. Experts say most involve factors at home, I.e. improperly stored leftovers involve both systems, but are attributable to the at home fault..
> The risk is hugely overblown in my opinion
Sure, only about 3000 Americans die a year of food poisoning and most of them will have had other contributing health factors..
I simply reject this idea that a person who thinks food safety is easy is doing food safety really well.
Restaurants have additional complications and risks of not knowing the health of their guests, etc, and having a high volume of food and therefore bacteria passing through. The average home cook scaling up their behaviors would be much more dangerous and doesn't recognize the indicators of mistakes that would kill one of those unlucky 3000 as a house guest.
Thanks for setting a number. I think we primarily have different definitions of 'extremely common' and how concerned one should be.
I think that is a high estimate of incidence and mortality, but even taken at face value, I still wouldnt call that common. we are talking about a once every 5 year event, or if we apply a pareto (20%/80%) assumption, once every 25 years for a normal healthy person.
For a normal healthy person, I think getting some diarrhea once every 25 (or 5) years isn't a big deal. This tracks with my anecdotal evidence, where most adults can recall having food poisoning one or two times. This, based on my risk tolerance, doesnt even rank on my list of concerns.
On that note I'm reminded hearing from a chef actually that if you've ever had diarrhea, its most likely you had a mild form of food poisoning.
> I've also seen some close calls like when my fiancee was served 'rare' pork... Which isn't a culinary thing.
Don't let the Germans know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett
Some teams I worked with would ritually celebrate Mettwoch every Wednesday (Mittwoch).
Rare pork is absolutely a thing.
https://www.seriouseats.com/case-for-raw-rare-pink-pork-food...
Food safety is a matter of both temperature and time (https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-s...), and we’ve all but eradicated trichinosis in commercially available pork.
exactly, you can have problems also with rare beef
I'm self-administering (unwittingly) mild food poisoning pretty regularly because I can't throw away food, particularly food that I spent precious time on cooking it myself.
Like a big pot of soup, some fried meat and whatever side dish like cooked cabbage. The idea is to spend the unpleasant cooking time once, put it all in the fridge then for a few days at least the whole effort is just to retrieve servings and heat them before eating.
Most of the times I finish what I cooked before starting to spoil but even spoiling isn't very sudden. Like I ate 5 days old soup yesterday and tasted a little funny but it was all good, no side effects. There's still a bowl left at the bottom of the pot today and by the time I'm hungry it's too late to start thinking and waiting for alternatives so what the heck. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger I guess. Therefore it happens sometimes that I wakeup at 2 AM with an acute feeling that a bowel evacuation is imminent if you know what I mean :)
The trick is to once every couple of days when it's starting to get to that point where it'll go bad soon, take it out, and re-cook it somehow to kill any bacteria. This could be tossing soup back on the stove, or microwaving veggies steaming hot.
Also, it helps a lot to have strict sanitary standards for yourself, like always using a clean, fresh utensil to scoop out your servings. Or if you use the same one, start from the most-recently cooked food and end at the oldest, so you're not potentially introducing bacteria or mold from older stuff into newer stuff.
I eat leftovers sometimes up to maybe 10 days at max, but I am pretty good at avoiding any issues from it.
For soups and stews, a useful approach is transfer into smaller single-serving containers to freeze. Then you can take out one serving at a time to thaw and reheat while the rest can stay frozen for many weeks.
You just have to cool it first so you don't overload the freezer with too much energy at once. We cool the pot, then divide and refrigerate the smaller containers overnight before transferring to the freezer the next morning.
We put our whole soup pot into a cold water bath to rapidly cool it. When the water warms appreciably, drain and replace with cold water again. Sometimes we put ice or those sealed gel ice packs into the bath to really accelerate the process.
That's called the sous la vie style of cooking, gaining popularity in busy North American households every decade.
I presume you meant 'sous vide', aka stewing stuff in plastic bags. When talking about various chemical crap in food and around it, I find it hilarious that folks consider baking food they eat in plastic bag as something to not even pause and think about healthwise
If you’re concerned about the plastic you can use reusable silicone bags.
Are you referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide or am I missing the joke here?
I have a shellfish allergy, every meal out is like a game of Russian Roulette
you microwaved a steak?!!
Roasting meat in a microwave oven (without water in a covered glass vessel) is a valid cooking method, which provides tasty meat in a perfectly reproducible way and in a shorter time than traditional cooking.
Nevertheless, for good results it must be done at a low power (I use 440 W in a 1000 W oven) and a long time, e.g. 20 to 25 minutes for chicken, about 30 minutes for turkey and more for pork/beef. For organs, e.g. livers, hearts, gizzards, a somewhat shorter time is enough.
When done for the first time, experiments are needed to determine the optimal power and time, which depend on the type of oven and on the amount and kind of meat. Once determined, the results will always be the same and the meat is very tasty, because it loses nothing, except a part of the water content (roasted meat has typically 2/3 of the weight of raw meat, due to water loss).
The meat should be microwave-roasted after removing the bones, and preferably after being cut in bite-sized pieces, which will avoid too violent steam expulsions if the power level is set too high.
This is an uncomfortable amount of information around microwave cooking meat for me..
It’s a reasonable thing to try for someone who doesn’t know how to cook a steak and may have been expressly forbidden from using the stove.
Plus he was twelve, definitely in the age range where such errors are the expected product of experimentation in an unfamiliar world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4tIPFD7W3Q
Somebody microwaved a whole brisket, and it was surprisingly good.
I'm shocked, I would never expect a microwave to make anything other than grey, chewy meat
People get unreasonably squeemish about microwaves. There's nothing wrong with them. Frozen TV dinners suck but that's something different.
You sound like you have the traditional Hughes sensitive gut. Welcome to the family.
Note that it is a professional blackbox with regular oversight and heavy regulations (depending on area). Cooking at home is certainly transparent in comparison, it is also the work of a usually incompetent amateur with no proper training, zero oversight and zero regulations to adhere to.
Where I live, the former is far more trustworthy, with home dining only winning on price and ingredient choice - not safety.
Not a general solution by far, but for takeaway coffee I like to use a reCup reusable plastic cup: https://recup.de/mehrwegbecher/ that I never exchange and wash myself - Germany only so far, but you might find a similar product. Some places give a small discount for bringing your own cup.
> I can control what I use at home. I can't when I eat or drink out.
Of course you can, just pack a lunch. If your trip is longer than a day, then stop at grocery stores instead of restaurants. It's easy to avoid restaurants, so the failure to replicate this finding with residential dishwashers is good news. How could it be "even worse"?
> I can control what I use at home. I can't when I eat or drink out.
the same can be said about the enormous amounts of salt they put in food ... how do you insure people wash their hands when cooking? eating out is an exercise in trust.
No. You use the third choice, that you already mentioned. Eat at home. The quality is better. The price is cheaper. The service is personalized.
Seed oils served on a platter coated in rinse aid, welcome to the future!
> They specifically mention that they could not repeat their findings on consumer dishwashers.
this should be the top comment
Yes, but let me add my personal but - bottles for kids often have complex non leaking valves where detergent accumulates - as in you can see pieces of undissolved tablet every single time inside it. If missed it’ll affect little kids, every day, so be aware.
Also personal, but not every member of the family thinks about how water behaves — like how it pools — while loading the machine.
Constant debate between me and my significant other. She’s always annoyed that I go through and reorganize everything so that things drain and rinse properly.
I did not see that in the article. Where is it?
This is not correct. It is about all dishwashers, but professional ones seem to lack a cleansing cycle after rinse aid is applied, thus the concentration of resulting rinse aid is higher. A consumer dishwasher is also used in their tests, but the concentration was much less than the professional dishwasher - however, they tested with 20g of rinse aid and used assumptions of the number and volume of washing cycles from their test dishwasher. A deviation of 10% difference in since water could increase the concentration significantly, by a factor of ~2 or more depending on the final rinsing stage.
So, in their example, the results in consumer dishwashers fell in the 1:40,000 - 1:80,000 dilution range. But, that does not necessarily apply to a different brand of dishwasher with a different method of rinsing. A 10% savings in the rinse cycle water might move that ratio into the 1:20,000 - 1:40,000 range (which is within the range of having an significant effect). So, I interpret this as not dismissing of consumer dishwashers, but rather indicating more careful study is needed.
Every once in a while I grab a water cup, usually at a coffee shop, and I notice the cups smell a bit like bleach. Always struck me as weird, but I figured they wouldn't put them out that way if it wasn't safe
I might be more careful now
Almost universally, the people handling your food at time of service have the least amount of training in the food delivery chain.
Upscale restaurants will generally do a better job here with temperature control and regular inspections.
Having a food handlers card as a chef is generally required but not for expo or servers and questionable for line chefs outside of higher end establishments.
Bottom line, unless you’re at a Michelin or Beard restaurant you should expect you’re being exposed to more harmful stuff than you’d expect.
I doubt most minimum wage earning coffee shop teens will know any better.
why would they? if you wanted someone trained in food chemistry then your coffee would cost 2x. hell, chances are the manager doesn't know much more, either.
they have dishwasher, they put cups in dishwasher, they run, they serve in clean cups.
it's clear from the article that this is an issue across the entire food service industry, and has nothing to do with whether or not your pimply faced barista knows what the safe level of rinse aid in pre-made clears is.
They know better than to drink out of the machines which were supposedly cleaned when they weren't there to know for sure.
In the best-run high-turnover locations where cleaning agents are used according to a rigorous schedule proven to prevent slime and bacteria, it might be even more likely to have exposure if the chemicals are habitually incompletely rinsed from the apparatus afterward.
At a small coffee shop they may not have a dishwasher and instead have a few buckets in series starting with a sanitizer solution bucket followed by a few progressive rinse buckets
I had over 10 years of eczeme/sensitivity between my fingers after operating a professional dishwasher for under a year.
I always thought the reason was the handling of the hot, sprayed tableware. It set on pretty quickly too : couple of months.
It probably is. There's no indication that these results mean anything about the effects on skin.
> There's no indication that these results mean anything about the effects on skin.
I didn't claim that, but I think it was a combination of the temperature and the (rinse) spray. One could feel the spray.
How did your eczema go away?
At the time I got some 'hormone' ointment from my doctor ( this is really scary and amazing stuff btw, apply it before bed, next morning : completely restored fingers ).
I noticed the eczema returned as soon as I did wet cleaning in the house, so I converted to a staunch cleaning gloves wearer.
> When individual components of the rinse aid were investigated separately, alcohol ethoxylates elicited a strong toxic and barrier-damaging effect.
To clarify a bit, it's not professional dishwashers (the machines) but the soap / chemicals used for commercial dishwashing. Minor but important when thinking about the broader problem.
Mind you, it gets diluted but those end up in the water supply, as does many other knows and unknowns. For me, the question has not be what effect does Compound X or Compound Y have individually, but when in the wild what happens when you combine A to Z+? Then what?
That entirely depends on the stability of the compounds in waste water. They break seem to break down sufficiently quickly[1] that it was evaluated as a potential problem in sampling waste water to even determine their content.
Did you do the 'sniff-test'? I did, and do again from time to time, when elsewhere. In my experience I can smell that stuff on the dishes and glassware, even after having cleaned them by hand before, and even after a second run without detergent. On every consumer dishwasher, so far.
That alone was reason for me to avoid them, since decades. And this hasn't changed. And I have no 'super-nose'(I think).
I knew a guy who had an ugly, painful ulcer on the top of his foot for a few months after dripping some liquid commercial dishwasher detergent on his sneaker while refilling the dispenser.
That stuff is nasty.
Another interesting question is what countries they got their detergents from. Formulas may vary across the world based on what's allowed and what's not.
Correct, but the question remains if the lower concentrations in consumer dishwashers might also affect health on some level.
I don’t see any mention of that in the article. Where did you read it?
“… in concentrations used in professional dishwashers.“
Most residential dishwashers seem to have a rinse-aid dispenser that you fill up with usually finish jet-dry.
It seems to have the alcohol ethoxylates mentioned in this paper:
https://www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners/2994-FinishJetDryRinseAg...
I expect it is also in the finish dishwasher detergent pods.
digging deeper the wikipedia article on ethoxylation says:
Ethoxylated fatty alcohols are often converted to the corresponding organosulfates, which can be easily deprotonated to give anionic surfactants such as sodium laureth sulfate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation
I had trouble with SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate) and switched to toothpaste, shampoo and laundry detergents without this.
This chemical has gotten a bad rap and a lot of formulas were changed to use sodium laureth sulfate mentioned above. (I avoided that too)
I'll bet they are all trouble.
Get yourself a big old tub of anhydrous citric acid from Amazon or wherever, make up a 10% solution and use that in place of rinse aid. Just check with your dishwasher manufacturer that it’s not going to cause issues first.
I got a new Miele unit a few months ago and the manual specifically advises the use of such a solution, with caution not to make it any stronger.
It’s been working like a charm.
From my experience, this will eventually remove any printed on markings from your glassware; for example, all of the measuring lines on Pyrex cups, etc.
Not a huge deal, just worth noting
It can be a huge deal, making it worth nothing /s
Does it have to be anhydrous? Seems like a waste to go for the more expensive stuff when you're going to dissolve it anyway. Food-grade citric acid monohydrate should be cheaper.
The manual just said a citric acid solution so I guess whatever source will do. I suppose it’s just as easy to get a reasonably accurate concentration if you account for the water already present in monohydrate.
What do the dishes look like with this solution? I’ve never used rinse aid or any variants, and i wonder what I’m missing.
According to another comment - you're _not_ missing the printed ink on your dishes. If you are happy with the state that your dishes come out of the wash, then you are fine.
I'm not using rinse aid at all. Just dishwasher gel with no rinse aid included, and salt. Cheap-ish Beko dishwasher. No issues.
Agreed, but I’m also someone who thinks dryer sheets are a scam as well.
They’re not?
I personally find that if I don't use them, my socks, towels, etc all come out very stiff and dry.
Yes, I know it's not ideal for towels because the wax inhibits some absorption, but I couldn't stand it so I just went back to using dryer sheets.
Soon I'll be getting a good quality dryer with a steam sanitize mode, maybe that will help.
I use them on clothing, but not on towels. Best of both worlds.
So, you use the salt as a rinse aid?
What are the advantages over plain vinegar? Been using that my whole life without any concern beyond wanting to avoid expensive rinse aids.
Vinegar can be a stronger acid than citric acid and has the potential to damage rubber sealings. That's why many manufacturers specifically advise against it.
Interesting. I’ve used 5% for as long as I can remember, seems to be recommended for that reason. Just never bothered to look into it before as my units haven’t shown any damage. Thanks!
Same. I've used normal 5% vinegar for years and haven't had any problems.
Besides chemical properties, citric acid may turn out to be cheaper, especially if bought in large quantities.
But in the end, I think the cost savings of citric vs vinegar vs rinse aid is negligible. Usage should be about 5mL per wash (matches my experience), and even if you use fancy rinse aid, it is still a small fraction of the costs of running a dishwasher.
Note that the article is concerned about professional dishwashers, they didn't reproduce their findings on household dishwashers. Professional dishwashers are very different from household dishwashers, and they use much higher concentration of detergent and rinse aid.
Vinegar destroys the rubber sealings.
Vinegar is a solvent for many plastics.
According to this review, citric acid doesn't work as a rinse aid replacement:
https://www.test.de/Klarspueler-im-Test-Jeder-dritte-hinterl...
I stopped using rinse-aid entirely on my 10-year old Bosch, and barely notice a difference. Maybe plastics come out a tad wetter than before, but they were never fully dry even with rinse-aid.
The last time an article like this went around, I decided to do the same thing with my Miele. The metal starting becoming stained pretty soon, and just recently I decided to switch to 7th Generation organic detergent powder. YMMV but wanted to share my anecdata for anyone considering the same.
How do you make "organic detergent"? Was it grown without synthetic pesticides, or...? I'm pretty skeptical of the word "organic" getting thrown around in marketing... so I'm really curious what makes a detergent qualify as organic.
Apologies, I got the USDA certification wording wrong: it is a USDA Certified Biobased Product.
Doing the same for rinse aid. Didn’t find a practical alternative for the main cleaning solution.
I've found rinse aids that include citric acid end up pitting stainless steel cutlery over time, so I avoid them
(2022)
1 year ago, 411 comments : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33822149
Got triggered by epithelial.
Ok, this is posed to generate some sensationalist headlines. Do we get these concentrations with regular use in a dishwasher? Does it have cumulative exposure effects? Does it even reach the gut lining after digestion enzymes and acids?
From the summary it seems that they only investigated the dose dependent toxicity.
The summary says "detergent residue from professional dishwashers demonstrated the remnant of a significant amount of cytotoxic and epithelial barrier–damaging rinse aid remaining on washed and ready-to-use dishware", which might address the question about concentrations in regular use.
For me the word remnant confuses me.
I interpreted it as "leftovers of a significant amount" not a "significant amount of leftovers", meaning that it was used in high quantities, but only remnants (in non significant amounts) were found.
You shouldn't assume remnant means "non significant", just "fewer"/"less than" what you started with. If only 5% of the substance remains (aka, the remnants) is still enough to cause problems, those are remnants by definition, but could still be significant amounts in terms of their (chance of) effects/impact.
Side note, those numbers are entirely arbitrary to illustrate the point, not meant to be indicative in anyway of how much is actually left in the processes above.
You can say that, but a lot of detergents and rinse aids use the class of nasty chemicals. But there's detergents and rinse aids that don't have it.
What you're looking for is "Alcohol ethoxylates". Avoid these.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33822149
11 months ago. Direct copy of linked study.
I stopped using extra shine mode on my Bosch dishwasher to save a little rinse aid. Noticed no difference. Vinegar ruined the seals and had to replace it.
Can someone who understands more about chemistry tell me where exactly which detergents use alcohol ethoxylates and how do I spot them from the label? Should I be concerned about this at home?
Household dishwashers are not affected because they usually have an additional wash cycle in the end. This study is about professional machines which wash dishes in mere minutes. So you can't do anything about it if you still want to eat at restaurants and don't want to bring your own dishes.
Always wondered what dishes look like with rinse aid and why people buy it. What am I missing? Are my dishes and glasses not sparkly enough without this aid?
Hard water. The rinse aid fixes that. Otherwise my glasses or silverware have to be rewashed and dried to get the spots out.
Are you using tablets?
No - liquid. Why? Does it matter?
Tablets have rinse aid already added. I don't know anything about liquids, though. It is not a thing in Germany afaik.
There is a detailed article in German with more information:
https://www.spektrum.de/news/klarspueler-gefahr-fuer-die-dar...
Overall, this sounds like the danger is rather low.
Anyone noticed how they wash and rinse behind bars? It can be terrifying. The ones that don't use industrial dishwashers (bad as we're learning here) also just do a rapid sub 1 second dip into one sink with detergent chemicals, a sub 1 second dip onto a second water sink, and then upside down it goes on the shelf, ready to be reused.
How naive was I to think it's both cleaning well and not leaving dangerous chemicals as residue to mix onto a water or beer.
I might be generalising but in some countries (UK) it's common to not rinse soap/washing up liquid off dishes after washing them by hand. Being hypochondriac I was always curious about health aspects of this and feared something similar to what's described in the article.
I’m surprised that people don’t taste that in the food/drink they consume off their soapy dishes. It’s a distinct unpleasant taste that I tend to over rinse somewhat just to avoid, especially with cups/mugs where transfer is maximized.
Though rinse aid is for mechanical dishwashers only.
I really want safety tests for consumer products to not be black/white.
Instead, more and more tests should be necessary for the more people you want to sell your product to, and the more people use it.
Some toy you sell 1000 of to people at a craft fayre should require a simple declaration that you didn't knowingly use leaded paint, while something you sell 10 billion of (eg dishwasher tablets) should require a whole independent team of scientists to do every study they can think of the establish risk/benefit.
Interesting! I bought metal straws a while back for use at home, and I used to clean them in the dishwasher. After a while I realized that my stomach acted up almost every time I used them (regular aspartame sweetened sodas). It stopped when I started washing them by hand. My theory: There was detergent or rinse aid left inside. About as unscientific as you can get but I'm "certain"...
If you want to understand rinse aids better, I recommend this Technology Connections video (I've set the time stamp to the rinse aid section): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll6-eGDpimU&t=1935s
Off topic: this is my first time hearing of rinse aids. It really feels odd (to me) that such a thing would exist. I thought we all just used water and a napkin.
I also have no experience with dishwashers, so how different is dishwater detergent from regular dishwashing soap?
Rinse aid is a dishwasher-specific product. It “helps” by removing residual soap and water spots from a dishwasher cycle.
I use a brand of dishwasher tabs that are supposed to be more “natural” and never use rinse aid, to no ill effect. Personally I think the normal tablets and rinse aid are specifically designed to be used together.
Tabs usually include both detergent and rinse aid. Normally you would use both separately.
I thought the study meant the stuff used at the end after washing. Here in Canada bars and restaurants after washing dishes must rinse dishes in a disinfectant bath and let the dishes air dry. The rinse aid sounds like something in the soap itself that helps the soap not stick to the final clean dishes.
It also seems to be the water used about 4 liters of water in commercial dishwashers vs 12 liters for household types. Commercial use less water, more powerful detergent, no water rinse.
Rinse aid is a detergent that helps remove the residue other detergents or minerals in the water might leave on dishes after washing. It's not needed for hand washing, where mechanical scrubbing & a rinse with clean water performs the same task.
Dishwasher detergent is a surfactant, but is not a soap. All soaps are detergents, not all detergents are soaps. Soaps form insoluble precipitates when used with "hard" water, dishwasher detergents don't do that. They're not good to touch directly (rather harsh on the skin, they'll remove all the oil) but since they don't form those precipitates they work in a wider variety of conditions than soaps do. They also tend to include some other components, like bleach. That helps them clean better without needing mechanical scrubbing, which dishwashers don't do.
From the article:
>An exciting finding of the present study is that alcohol ethoxylates that are responsible for these toxic effects can be extracted from recently washed dishware and still kept the toxicity.
Scientists.
Interesting, my mother taught me to always rinse the soap off from my dishes thoroughly and look at that. Sometimes superstition is more useful than expert advice.
What's superstitious about that? Soap isn't made for human consumption, it seems prudent to avoid consumption unless proven safe.
Momma was the expert, it was always pure superstition for people to think they didn't need to rinse, not just once but multiple times.
In the analytical chem lab, you can get an idea how suitable pyrexware is for future use by mathematically considering the quality of the final rinse water, the effective dilution ratio, and the number of times rinsed.
I should have said 'half-baked theories' or 'unfounded beliefs' instead of 'superstition'. Sometimes it's hard to find the ideal word.
I wonder if this, combined with the fact that eating out has gotten significantly more common, is a factor in rising colon cancer rates.
I wonder if putting the dishwasher in soft water mode will also reduce the risk of this. Should use less rinse aid then.
Doesn't the software/hard water mode just affect how much the ion exchanger (filled with salt) is used?
Perhaps, but as a matter of fact, soft water needs less rinse aid. Not sure whether the hardness setting of the dishwasher takes this into account.
You could very well be correct, it's definitely not my field of expertise.
How effective would vinegar and the hottest water cycle be vs these gut destroying detergents?
Anyone who has touched an unwrapped dishwasher tablet with wet hands can tell you it has stuff in to pretty rapidly dissolve human...
Horrible title, since the study didn't actually link normal detergent to gut damage, just rinse aid.
The offending ingredient (alcohol ephoxylate) is present in both my dishwasher pods and my rinse aid.
I might start skipping the rinse aid and I'll seek out dishwasher pods that don't have that ingredient.
But apparently it's more od an issue with "professional" (restaurant) dishwashers, which use less water and more chemicals. I gathered this from other comments and I don't know if it's true.
Use powder instead of pods. It's better anyway.
I've looked at the dishwasher detergents at a few of my local grocery stores, and all of them contain either ethoxylates or "fatty alcohol alkoxylates", which some brief googling tells me are a class of chemicals that include ethoxylates. I've been unable (even at specialty health food stores) to locate a dishwasher detergent that lacks this class of chemical. If you find a brand that doesn't contain it, please let me know.
I also looked at home-made detergent recipes, as we've had good luck making our laundry detergent, but the blog I looked at showed severe streaking and residue on their example dishwasher load. I can't say that appeals to me, either.
Generic Walmart powder doesn't seem to have it.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Automatic-Dishwasher-...
Kroger gel and powder doesn't seem to have it.
https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-lemon-scent-dishwasher-deter...
https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-lemon-scent-dishwasher-deter...
Frankly the harmful ingredients seem to be exclusive to pacs and pods.
> Enterocytic liquid-liquid interfaces were established on permeable supports, and direct cellular cytotoxicity, transepithelial electrical resistance, paracellular flux, immunofluorescence staining, RNA-sequencing transcriptome, and targeted proteomics were performed.
tldr; they did science
Is there an ELI5?
Alcohol ephoxylate, which is present in rinse aid and some dishwasher pods,damages gut tissue and causes inflammatory and immune issues.
The study looked at concentrations found in "professional" (restaurant) doses of the chemicals.
I'm not sure how much it applies to residential dishwashers. I did find that ingredient in my rinse aid and dishwasher pods.
The stuff restaurants use to wash dishes is really bad for your tummy and very often that stuff is still on the dishes, while you're eating off of them.
Scientists create a layer of intestinal epithelial cells in a lab, minus all the other components in your intestine, then expose them to high concentrations of detergent and rinse aid.
Turns out cells don’t like it.
Who’d a thunk it?