66 ms·
Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids
- wobbly_bush 4y agoIs my reading of the summary correct that it is only (or mainly?) talking about rinse aid and not about the detergent?
- ars 4y agoYah, it seemed the same to me. I don't use rinse aid, never have, you don't actually need it, you can just let the dishes air dry for slightly longer. If you have hard water then soften it, rather than use a rinse aid.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoIt is talking about professional dishwashers like the ones used in restaurants. So if you dine out on a regular basis you're probably getting exposed to this stuff even if you don't use it at home. PS I have no chemical expertise, but the article singles out alcohol ethoxylates as the cause of this damage. And while I don't use rinse aid in my home dishwasher, my Cascade dishwasher pods list "Isotridecanol Ethoxylated" as an ingredient, which may be one of these substances? At least this gets rinsed off, though I doubt it gets rinsed completely.
- ars 4y ago> At least this gets rinsed off It does not get rinsed off. The hope is that it drips off the dishes, but some will remain and then dry. Does this ingredient dry? I don't know.
- Bud 4y agoIndeed, the study seems to conclude that it's not rinsed off completely and residue remains on the "clean" dishes.
- kwhitefoot 4y agoMany years ago I worked as a skivvy in a hotel kitchen. We never used any detergent for the crockery, it just used extremely hot water. The dishes seemed very clean and they dried very rapidly.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoHow... many... years ago? When I started cooking professionally in the 80s three-stage hand wash had already been required by health codes everywhere for decades. I've seen all kinds of shit but every kitchen at least has the setup and chemicals for that for health inspections if nothing else. In practice even the sketchiest restaurants will have quats even if they only fill it once a day.
- SoftTalker 4y agoGP is talking about a commercial dishwasher. You can't hand wash hot enough -- you'd get serious burns. So anything you hand wash needs the three-stage wash, rinse, sanitize process with detergent and chemical sanitizer.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoOh you're right, I misread it. Thanks.
- SoftTalker 4y agoYep. If the water is hot enough you don't need chemical detergent or sanitizer. But we're talking about water that is almost boiling -- you'd only find dishwashers that hot in a commercial kitchen.
- hedora 4y agoI wonder if the sanitize button on a residential unit is good enough. (The machines in the article are pressurized, but that is a new technology. The GP post’s machines were probably older.)
- quercusa 4y agoIf I remember chem class correctly, -nol indicates an alcohol (ethanol, methanol...)
- jandrese 4y agoIf the purpose of the substance is to make the dishes dry faster it makes sense that it would not be fully rinsed off at the end of the cycle. In theory you would hope that they would evaporate off of the dishes, but that leads to air quality issues, so all in all these rinse aids seem problematic.
- hammock 4y agoRinse aid and detergent both have the same active, harmful ingredient: sulfates aka AES aka surfactants. The difference is that detergent gets rinsed off, while rinse aid IS the rinse (vs plain non-aided water).
- pfdietz 4y agoIt's not sulfates, it's ethoxylated alcohols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation
- hammock 4y agoIt's both, and they work the same way on the gut
- pfdietz 4y agoThat may be true, but your assertion that rinse aids have sulfates is incorrect. All the ones I've looked at have nonionic surfactants that are not sulfates. (There are also sulfates that are aren't AES, such as sodium sulfate, which appears in many powdered dishwasher detergents. I doubt this has the same effect, so it's incorrect to just blame "sulfates".) I think you need to learn the gloriously liberating feeling of admitting you were wrong.
- kragen 4y agomany surfactants are not sulfates many sulfates are not surfactants none of the numerous meanings in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES are in any way related to surfactants or sulfates many sulfates and surfactants are not 'harmful' as generally understood (though there's probably a lethal dose of any of them) why are you posting this misinformation here
- hammock 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation#Alcohol_ethoxysulfates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation#Alcohol_ethoxysul...
- jkepler 4y agoYes, but they also didn't study how this affects people---their work was all /in vivo/, and they call for more study at the end.
- kibibu 4y agoI think you mean in vitro. There are no animal trials at all.
- etienne_oq 4y agoFor the one looking for a low-tech alternative to rinse aids: white vinegar does wonders. You can easily get it food grade as it is used to make preserves. Similarly it can be used as a softener for washing clothes. The cherry on top: it's cheap!
- blockwriter 4y agoIt’s endocrine awareness day on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33816861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33816861)
- jasonhansel 4y agoI don't think the OP proposes an endocrine-related mechanism for this damage.
- b20000 4y agoSo what does this mean for all of us who buy coffee at coffee shops every morning? Will this cause serious problems long term since we are consuming residues of their dishwasher chemicals? One potential solution is to always get your coffee to go, but that probably only partly solves the problem.
- gadflyinyoureye 4y agoOh I bet that is a frying pan fire thing. The cups are probably endocrine disrupters too with a plastic lining.
- hammock 4y agoHot beverage cups are coated with polyethylene which is one of the most inert polymers you can get. You could do much worse.
- Karawebnetwork 4y agoThere are a lot of things than can go wrong when you order from a restaurant or coffee shop. There could be diseases, bacteria, virus, chemicals or even contaminent such as glass parts or insects. The answer to this question would be to only order from places you trust - and even then, contamination can happen quickly and in invisible ways.
- lazide 4y agoAs anyone who has worked the back of a kitchen can attest, there are almost no actually trustworthy restaurants.
- b112 4y agoI've worked in several, and if you mean "infallible" OK, but I can assure you the people I worked with gave a damn, cared, and would never intentionally slack off, or do a poor job, placing people at risk. Maybe you just worked with/for terrible people?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- johndoughy 4y ago> our results suggest that alcohol ethoxylates were the main culprit component of the rinse aid responsible for the observed toxicity and damage to the epithelial barrier integrity.
- seydor 4y agomaybe dont wash them that often
- wutheringh 4y agoI know a guy who washed his dishes, and he died
- PainfullyNormal 4y agoTrue story!
- merth 4y agoI know a guy, who has 20 pans and all dirty, washes no 19 to cook his 2$ stake. what a legand.
- zgin4679 4y agoI knew Bill, too. Good man, clean dishes. RIP, Bill.
- WillPostForFood 4y agoYou should start a business: a restaurant that serves your food on the previous diner's unwashed dishes. It would be like my college apartment kitchen, so you could hire me as manager.
- seydor 4y ago
- trebor 4y agoIronically, the summary isn't as good as the "Key Messages" section at the bottom: > * Professional dishwasher rinse aid causes cellular cytotoxicity and directly impaired barrier integrity of gut epithelial cells by damaging TJ and AJ expressions in daily exposed concentrations. > * The underlying mechanisms of epithelial barrier disruption in response to rinse aid were cell death in 1:10,000 dilutions and epithelial barrier opening in 1:40,000 dilutions. > * The alcohol ethoxylates, an ingredient of the rinse aid that remains on washed dishware, caused the gut epithelial inflammation and barrier damage. It appears to be the rinse aid when used in professional dishwashers utilized in restaurants, etc, due to high concentration of the rinse aid contaminating the "clean" dishes.
- jasonhansel 4y agoImportantly, when they tested a household dishwasher, they didn't find the same issues: > In contrast, the residual substances on the cups washed in a household dishwasher with detergent B were not present at sufficiently high concentrations to exert cytotoxicity and impair the epithelial barrier function (see Fig E9).
- hammock 4y agoIf you use a rinse aid in your dishwasher I bet you’d find harmful results. Home detergent does contain AES (sulfates) but it gets rinsed pretty well. However if you use rinse aid, the rinse water itself has surfactants (AES, more sulfates), which will remain on the dishware- that’s the whole point actually, so the water beads off.
- joezydeco 4y agoOne of the most popular brands in the US, Jet Dry, has the ethoxylated alcohol mentioned in the article: http://www.rbnainfo.com/MSDS/CA/FINISH%20-%20JET-DRY%20Rinse%20Agent%20(Liquid)%20-%20All%20Scents%20EN.pdf http://www.rbnainfo.com/MSDS/CA/FINISH%20-%20JET-DRY%20Rinse...
- SoftTalker 4y ago
- fire 4y agohuh, I didn't know home and commercial rinse aids were any different?
- skrbjc 4y agoBased on the paper it seems to be primarily an issue with dilution. They say home dishwashers dilute it to a rate of around 1:80000, the commercials ones are around 1:1000 - 1:10000. The problems they observed seem to happen in that lower dilution range.
- fire 4y agoholy hell; do they really need it to be that concentrated?
- boomchinolo78 4y agoOh wait....cue gluten-allergy
- merth 4y agoI think I have gluten-sensitivity(cant confirm). I rarely eat out. always order delivery, use plastic fork. I dont have a dish washer.
- boomchinolo78 4y agoIt's not the only cause, but I'd say in general anything that damages the intestinal lining has the potential. Try and see if you have a B vitamin deficiency, it leads to slower regeneration of the lining.
- jliptzin 4y agoWhat the hell is rinse aid anyway
- jandrese 4y agoResidential version is marketed under the trademark "Jet Dry". It's intended to prevent hard water spots on your dishes, but most people don't care enough or don't have this problem so it's not heavily used.
- jasonhansel 4y agoIt's a special liquid you put in a compartment in your dishwasher to make it work better. I don't bother; I've tried it and haven't observed any effects.
- xxpor 4y agoIt really depends on if you have a dishwasher that relies on evap for drying, or an explicit heating element. The latter is becoming more rare as time goes on.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoHow would dishes dry then? Is there at least a fan providing air flow?
- xxpor 4y agoThis is why rinse aid is critical, you have to minimize the amount of water on the dishes. The extremely hot water tends to heat up the dishes enough so they retain enough heat to evaporate off the rest of the water. Plastic stuff like cups tends to stay pretty wet since they don't have the thermal capacity of metal or porcelain. A big advantage with this design, other than the energy savings, is that you don't have to worry about putting plastic stuff on the bottom rack, since there's no localized source of heat that can melt them.
- balls187 4y ago
- RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y agoRinse aid is completely unneeded if you properly maintain and use your dishwasher. I never use any, and my dishes are completely spotless. 30 years old dishwasher, super hard water. Specifically, you should: - always fill the salt of the dishwasher's water softener once it's empty. It cannot soften the water if it doesn't get cleaned by the salt. If the water is not softened you will get spots. EDIT: Apparently US folks often have dishwashers which don't soften the water. Ugh. In Europe I haven't even heard that such a thing exists! :| - configure the dishwasher to your water hardness. - do NOT use detergent which is advertised as "you won't need salt". This is garbage for lazy people. It cannot properly replace the water softener. Think about it for a moment: The detergent is meant to fully dissolve during washing so you won't have it on your dishes after the final water cycle. The only way it could affect the softness of the water in the final cycle is if it did NOT fully dissolve in time. So there are two factors to be optimized which contradict - stay long enough to soften the water, but not long enough to leave remainders on the dishes. It will never work properly. - This is not related to rinse aid, but you should know it: Clean the sieve regularly, at least every week. It will get ultra nasty with gunk if you don't. If you have no time for cleaning it, buy a second one, switch them once one is dirty and put it among the dishes so the dishwasher washes it like a dish.
- casion 4y agoFill the salt? Configure for water hardness? I've never heard of either of these things before. Certainly not things on my, relatively fancy, dishwasher.
- RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_salt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_salt The water hardness setting determines how much the water softener tries to soften the water. If the water isn't soft enough, it will leave spots on the dishes. Hence people use "rinse aid", so the improperly softened water would drip off before it leaves spots. If the water is properly softened it contains no calcium etc. which could cause spots on your dishes.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
- Konohamaru 4y agoWhat is the solution? (Don't have the focus to read, understand, and analyze the scientific paper atm.)
- anon291 4y agoRealistically, rinse aid is hardly necessary.
- ketralnis 4y agoThe trouble isn't the solution so much as the precipitate
- spiznnx 4y agodon't use rinse aid, or use an "eco" one that doesn't contain Ethoxylated Alcohols
- kibibu 4y agoFor household concentrations (1:80,000) they didn't find any toxicity, so if your gut health is ok I wouldn't really worry about it
- blackhaz 4y agoHow to recognize an alcohol ethoxylate?
- hammock 4y agoAnything that ends in “sulfate” on the ingredients label. Or anything that is labeled “detergent” or “rinse aid.”
- pfdietz 4y agoHow did you get "sulfate" out of "ethoxylate alcohol". You probably confused them with ethoxysulfates, which are a related but different class of chemicals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation
- hammock 4y agoEA and EAS are extremely similar in the studied context, both in their use as surfactants in the tested products and their effect on the human body. The harm done by EAS was previously established by these same researchers and referenced in the paper: "Our recent studies have demonstrated that exposure to anionic surfactants in laundry detergents impairs the epithelial barrier functions in human skin and bronchial epithelial cells even at very high dilutions." "Anionic surfactants" AKA sulfates, sulfonates, phosphates. The EA are nonionic, by comparison, but do the same damage to the gut or any other part of the epithelium. https://www.ipcol.com/wp-content/uploads/SURFACTANT-TYPES.jpg https://www.ipcol.com/wp-content/uploads/SURFACTANT-TYPES.jp...
- awinter-py 4y agowonder how the proliferation of small motors + robots will affect the use of chemicals in applications like this better robotics tech can reduce chemical use by: 1. spot application of sponge in place of general application of chemicals 2. more targeted application of chemicals (only when + where needed) 3. replacing poison for pest / weed elimination with smart mobile traps (have seen laser POCs for both bugs + weeds) 4. cleaning materials for recycling using targeted friction instead of soap. separating oil and food scraps from drain water. separating human waste from gray water (and selling the nitrates) even for something innocuous like brushing your teeth, a robot can use advanced sensing to modify the dose of fluoride feels like lots of 'bits to atoms' projects here for someone who enjoys garbage
- hokkos 4y agoI use white vinegar instead of a dedicated rinse aids.
- GuB-42 4y agoIt is a tip I see often, and dishwasher manufacturers generally don't recommend it White vinegar is a very different product: it is not a surfactant, it is an acid. It means that it doesn't help rinsing, but it can remove scale. Both can prevent white stains, but the mechanism is very different. If it works just as well, why don't dishwasher manufacturers use acids instead of rinse aid? You can argue that white vinegar is cheap and they they prefer you use expensive detergents so that they can make profit, but they could also sell you expensive acids, so I don't think it is the reason. So what to do with it? Personally, I still use rinse aid because it is what the manufacturer recommends, and I have no better idea. It is not a significant expense, and according to the study, not as much as a problem with household dishwashers as it is with professional dishwashers (very different machines using different products).
- peatmoss 4y agoIn places with very hard mineral deposits, one solution is to put an inline mechanism that dispenses a very small amount of citric acid into the water supply. I'd guess that, for the amount of exposure time that your dishwasher components have with vinegar, it's not a problem. Same as the above poster, I've run rinse aid and vinegar both, with very similar results.
- aaron695 4y ago
- iLoveOncall 4y agoWait, people were serious when they said we shouldn't eat Tide Pods?
- sramsay 4y agoThe real news here is that there is such a thing as a "gut-on-a-chip."
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- magila 4y agoI suffered from chronic diarrhea for years which I attributed to Crohn's disease. This seemed obvious since diarrhea is a very common symptom of Crohn's, but its onset had been several years after I was diagnosed and prior to that I had tended more towards the opposite problem (constipation). I was thus always suspicious that the root cause lay elsewhere. After much experimenting I found that if I ran my dishwasher through an extra rinse cycle the diarrhea went away. I tried many different detergents but never found one which didn't cause problems, so I've just continued to run an extra cycle. My GI doctor didn't really believe me when I told him. I wonder how many people are having their IBS/IBD symptoms exasperated by detergent residue left on their dishes.
- michaelteter 4y agoWhile searching for causes, did you also look at ways to strengthen/rebalance/improve your GI system? I'm not sure if this will turn out to be quackery or snake oil, but the Super Gut book by William Davis makes some believable claims as to common causes of digest issues (along with solutions).
- XorNot 4y agoA HN poster recommended L. Reuteri supplements a while back, and I cannot recommend them enough: 6 months on and I've been able to completely drop a prucalopride prescription and have almost eliminated what used to be frequent and fairly crippling gut pain. The key I found was at about the 2 month mark things seemed to be getting worse, but after that a dramatic improvement. I was able to stop the supplements after the 3 month pack, though 6 months on there was some regression so I'm taking another round (which seems to have improved things). It might not be possible for whatever reason to sustain the culture in my intestine, but it's been the first actual improvement I've had in decades. Available as BioGaia, I recommend trying it if you have IBS symptoms.
- michaelteter 4y agoThis is good to hear. The Super Gut book describes a somewhat involved process in stages, with the latter rebuilding stage involving growing your own high population cultures; so it's nice to know that comparatively low effort supplements can be effective. The first stage of resetting, as described in the book, was to rebuild the lining of the intestine. Forgive my imprecision in describing it, as I have forgotten the details and don't feel like digging. The issue is that many of our foods are made with emulsifiers (baked goods, ice creams, etc.), and emulsifiers cause thinning of the intestine walls. That in turn creates a less than optimal environment, causing losses of good bacteria as well as increases/movements of bad bacteria. Fortunately that first stage is pretty easy - making clove tea with a couple other ingredients daily. I actually found it pleasant after the first few days. And then I read about clove tea and discovered that it's already a big thing, but where I grew up we've never heard of it!
- doitLP 4y agoIt’s time to place all chemicals in the “unsafe until proven safe” category.
- npongratz 4y agoI don't mean to be trite, but that won't work since everything is chemicals.
- maxerickson 4y agoYou also can't prove anything safe.
- balls187 4y agoGood old di-hydrogen monoxide. A horribly toxic chemical.
- hedora 4y agoIt is the #1 cause of death in the US for ages 1-4, and #2 from 5-14. Also, if you drink it, you will certainly die. https://www.cdc.gov/drowning/facts/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/drowning/facts/index.html
- sgerenser 4y agoSurely you mean if you inhale it?
- balls187 4y agoIf you inhale yes, but drinking it can also lead to certain death.
- reverius42 4y agoNot drinking it can also lead to certain death.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoA reason behind mysterious endless baby crying is often soap residues left on milk bottles. Always rinse a bottle again before using it.
- balls187 4y agoMan, that’s wild. I always sanitized my baby’s bottles, either via boiling water or via sanitizing steam bag.
- Wolfenstein98k 4y agoCitation needed. But also, yes rinse them after washing them, also use a baby bottle detergent instead of "full strength" or whatever. And then sterilise them.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoGerms or hot plastic?
- modeless 4y agoMy son has eczema and food allergies and I did a lot of research on actions we could take to help prevent the so called "atopic march" to hay fever and asthma. There's a lot of woo-woo stuff out there that I think can be safely ignored, but I did find what I consider strong evidence that families that hand wash their dishes have significantly lower incidence of some allergic symptoms. I thought it sounded weird and I didn't know what the mechanism could be but the evidence looked so strong that we stopped using our dishwasher. I guess this is one potential mechanism. Gas stoves and ovens are the other thing we stopped using, with good justification I think.
- robmsmt 4y agocan you explain more on the gas stoves and oven part?
- modeless 4y agoChildren living in houses with gas stoves have somewhere between 20% and 50% more asthma. https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/42/6/1724/737113?login=false https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/42/6/1724/737113?login=...
- MauranKilom 4y agoThey put a really high amount of particulates in the air, drastically reducing air quality.
- avsteele 4y agoThe particulate result is dubious from what I've seen Most people keyed into this from the Vox article: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602/gas-stove-cooking-indoor-air-pollution-health-risks https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602... Which links to: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1172959 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1172959 As evidence for the claim that Gas range put out more PM2.5 But if you consult table 3 of that article you will see it doesn't show that at all. The food (especially frying) swamps differences between electric vs gas ranges, which themselves aren't even significant.
- esaym 4y agoOk, so what do I use as a rinse aid then? I just dug all over amazon and pretty much everything has akoxylated alcohol or some form of polyoxypropylene laureth. And yes, I've purposely let the rinse aid run out just to see what happens. It wasn't pretty... Anyway to make something more "natural"? Some other ingredients I've seen include citric acid, urea, trisodium phosphate. But not sure if just mixing those together would work out....
- insane_dreamer 4y agoYou don't need any rinse aid, period.
- esaym 4y agoDid you not read what I wrote? Not sure what point you are making... I don't need to brush my hair, wear clothes, or wash my car either... But those are usually considered "proper" things to do. My first load without rinse aid resulted in spotty dishes. Not too bad, but annoying. By the third, it was worse. By the end of the week, all of the glassware was milky white and you could no longer see through it. You know that feeling you get when you run your finger nails across a chalkboard? Yea, we were getting that feeling by just running your hand across a glass plate. I ended up buying more rinse aid and then running the milky dishes through a cycle with about a 1/4 cup of coffee machine cleaner (citric acid) thrown in. Our water comes from a local lake and an underground aquifer surrounded in limestone if you are curious.
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoEither you are using too much detergent, or you have very hard water. A water softener would probably fix it.
- tsol 4y agoIt might be hard to avoid if your water supply is just hard to begin with. Maybe you can use it every second or third cycle.
- 4y ago
- moistly 4y agoThose of you with chronic diarrhea, please look into bile malabsorption. Normally consumed by gut bacteria at the end of your small intestine, it can cause problems when it passes into the lower intestine. Bile sequestration medication, normally used to reduce cholesterol levels, can be used to remediate the symptoms. IANAD, but it worked for me.
- hindsightbias 4y agoI remember washing clothes at my aunts for some holiday, and started sneezing crazily sometime afterward. 12 year old cousins kid said “oh, you’re allergic to Tide” derp. If it was toxic on my clothes, I wondered what I was eating. People think I’m crazy to not have a dishwasher or microwave.
- bonniemuffin 4y agoHow is a microwave related to this article/discussion?
- hindsightbias 4y agoWhat happens when you microwave a detergent covered bowl? Or a plastic bowl? Not to mention a burrito wrapped in plastic… You are what you eat.
- clnq 4y ago> What happens when you microwave a detergent covered bowl? So... what happens?
- jayd16 4y agoSome plastics are not food safe when heated and leach chemicals. Probably related to the concern the GP has.
- clnq 4y agoThis is a fascinating topic because there is no practical way of knowing what food-related items (containers, utensils, washing up liquids) are safe to heat and what aren't. Indeed no one can track the makeup of everything in their kitchen that comes in contact with food. Then there's the topic of items that are safe to use only in ideal conditions. Like Teflon in cookware that is said to be very safe unless it overheats, chips, or degrades in some way. The more I think about this, the more it sounds like a blind spot for most people. So I'd like to know whether heated-up washing-up detergent/dishwasher detergent is associated with something unhealthy in a proven (or reasonable) way.
- Mistletoe 4y agoThis isn’t a great way to test this. It’s a good way to begin exploring it. >Enterocytic liquid-liquid interfaces were established on permeable supports https://bioduro-sundia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/caco-2-assay.jpg https://bioduro-sundia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/caco-2... This is like a fake very fragile layer of cells cultured on a membrane. It’s good for preliminary data but it needs follow up data in vivo. Caveats off the top of my head- 1. Your real gut is massively more robust than Caco-2 cells grown as a monolayer on a support. You’ve got blood supply, lympathic system, villi and connective tissue, layer upon layer of cells covered in mucus- just a completely different ballgame. 2. Rinse aid would first go through your stomach, exposed to acid, be absorbed maybe, have pancreatic secretions added to it, have food with it and all the lipids, very long list. 3. What’s the concentration of rinse aid you actually absorb from your dishes? 1:20,000 doesn’t seem like enough dilution to me but maybe they address that. Nevertheless I won’t use rinse aid again. :) It’s not necessary for my dishes and it isn’t even worth the cost.
- twic 4y agoThe dilutions seem unrealistic, or at least physiologically irrelevant. This is how they get there: > A professional dishwasher completes 1 or 2 wash and rinse cycles using 3.5 L of water per cycle. The detergent and rinse aid are automatically dispensed into the water at a concentration of 1.5 to 4 mL/L and 0.1 to 0.5 mL/L, respectively. At these concentrations, the residual dilution factor after rinse ranges from 1:250 to 1:667 for detergents and 1:2,000 to 1:10,000 for rinse aids. So 1:10,000 is a plausible dilution of rinse aid in the rinse water. Unless people are drinking the rinse water (please don't), it's not a dilution that will ever be seen by the body. Rather, what the body will see is however much residue is left on a mug diluted in whatever the volume of the mug is. They do sort of address this: > To study the chemicals in the residue remaining on the surface of dishware after washing, 10 porcelain cups (190 mL size) were subjected to 1 full washing and drying cycle in professional (Winterhalter, GS501, Germany) and household (AEG, GS60AV, Poland) dishwashers and then 1 mL of culture medium was added into them. After shaking and waiting for 5 minutes, the culture medium was collected from the cups, filter-sterilized, and added to the monolayer and differentiated cell cultures directly or in 1:2, 1:5, and 1:10 dilutions. Except that they wash all the residues off in just 1 ml of medium. They then dilute that 1 ml onto cells: > The LDH cytotoxicity assay on monolayer Caco-2 cells showed that the toxicity exerted by the dried rinse aid residue on the cups washed in a professional dishwasher still takes place even at a 1:10 dilution (see Fig E9, A). TEER and PF were also measured in differentiated Caco-2 cells, and parallel results were observed when exposed to rinse aid. High concentrations (1:2 and 1:5 dilutions) of the residue severely impaired the epithelial barrier function as measured by the decreased TEER values. In the 1:10 dilution, nearly the same TEER values were observed compared with controls. So this isn't great, but it also doesn't seem like a big deal. You could rinse a cup in 10 ml of water, gargle with it, and be fine.
- surfpel 4y agoI've always felt uncomfortable using these, from the residual smell. I wonder how many subtle toxins we can't smell. I hardly fill the auto-release spot these days for that reason, haven't noticed any down side so far.
- michael1999 4y agoVinegar is a perfectly satisfactory rinse aid. The only downside it costs less, and the steam will smell funny if you open the door too soon.
- hilbert42 4y agoIt seems to me that a lazy person who reads or hears about this article and who worries about potential harm from dishwasher detergents is likely to run the cycle a second time with only water. A rough calculation would seem to indicate that a complete rinse-only cycle would reduce residue levels to well into the safety zone but at the cost of double the water and possibly double the power (if hot water were used). If this became a widespread concern and people acted this way then it wouldn't bode well for water conservation efforts.
- samtho 4y agoModern dish washers use under 4 gallons per cycle, so given you have at least one wash and one rise cycle, you’d only use a about 50% more if you are able to opt for rinse only. Compare that to a 2.2 gallon per minute water/efficient kitchen faucet where you’ll approach the amount of water consumed by your triple cycle load after just 5 minutes of leaving your water running.
- throwaway290 4y ago5 minutes of running water at full speed to wash up dishes seems like way too much, unless it's a really large household. Washing up after a quick meal takes a few seconds, and if a proper dinner with cooking you'd fill the sink enough to soak the load then come back to rinse.
- samtho 4y agoRunning the water continuously is not recommended but for people who were not taught water-saving practices, it is likely the default way one might go about hand-washing dishes.
- pja 4y agoA modern Bosch dishwasher will use 9.5 litres per cycle or < 3 gallons btw. IIRC 10l / cycle is a standard set in the EU, but I can’t find a reference right now.
- 1MachineElf 4y agoHere's an interesting video by Technology Connections on how most dishwasher "pods" are overkill: https://youtu.be/Ll6-eGDpimU https://youtu.be/Ll6-eGDpimU I see the bubbles foaming at the edges of my cups when I fill them with water, so I always rinse them before use. I would avoid most dishwasher detergent pods if I could, but I can't sell the idea to my significant other.
- Balgair 4y agoSeems my old Scout habits of always rinsing dishware out before use came in handy! It was typically for scorpions, spiders, or dust as a Scout, and the habit just stuck all these years. Looks like it may be helpful in other ways too.
- AtomicOrbital 4y agoI wash dishes by hand with hot water and a Korean abrasive cloth using no soap ... It's quicker and easier than anything else
- leobg 4y agoHave a link to the Korean abrasive cloth you recommend? Would like to try it.
- AtomicOrbital 4y agogoogle this ... Crown Choice Heavy Duty Dish Scrubbers for Cleaning Dishes & Pots ... its a slightly abrasive cloth
- djmips 4y agoWhat if they are greasy?
- neurostimulant 4y agoHow hot is the water? Soap kills and wash bacteria off the dish's surface, so if you substitute it with just hot water, the water have to be hot enough to kill those bacteria.
- lm28469 4y agoYou'll be fine, bacterias are everywhere, you literally have poop particles on your toothbrush and everything else in your bathroom, you'll be fine
- neurostimulant 4y agoI live in a country where bacteria-borne disease is rampant (typhoid, tuberculosis), so not using soap to wash dish is a dangerous thing to do, unless no other people ever come to your house.
- 4y ago
- mikeiz404 4y agoEPA has an article talking about a specific type of ethoxylate (NPE) in the context of impacts to aquatic life which has some interesting info in it [1]. Does some one know if alcohol ethoxylates are a type of nonylphenol ethoxylates? Some brief searching implies these may be separate things. From the article: > Q2. How are NP/NPEs used? > NPs/NPEs, which are produced in large volumes, are used for industrial processes and in consumer laundry detergents, personal hygiene, automotive, latex paints, and lawn care products. > Q6. What are the potential risks to people? > NP has been detected in human breast milk, blood, and urine and is associated with reproductive and developmental effects in rodents. > Q7. Is there an easy way for consumers to avoid using products with NP/NPEs? > Consumers can avoid products with NP/NPEs by looking for products with EPA’s Safer Choice Label on the shelves of major retailers. … 1: https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-tsca/fact-sheet-nonylphenols-and-nonylphenol-ethoxylates https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-t...
- htoiwuerweoir23 4y agoWhy is anyone surprised by any of this ? I don't mean to sound like a pleb, but the biggest lesson of the past two centuries is how much people bluff, use the name of 'science, progress, blah blah' to push for their own profits, regardless of actual consequences (bodily or environmentally or ecologically). I generally stick to old-school goods that are totally natural, cheap and are still massively produced in India. With the 'generic' stuff, half the shit is made from tortured-killed cows (urgh vomits) (admittedly, this is mostly outside India), and all of them are filled with god knows what, and made from god knows what. If you're India, check out Patanjali's ash and lime dishwasher soap that cost like Rs. 20 per bar. Shout out to FitTuber on Youtube who reviews a lot organic products from India.
- hanafudafan 4y agoNobody in this thread is expressing any surprise or shock. It's perfectly sensible that incredibly penetrating and dispersing engineered surfactants would damage a biological organism. It's the most natural thing in the world and I doubt anybody would feel surprise or shock when hearing that yet another engineered synthetic lifestyle substance is bad for you. On the other hand if we were to learn that these synthesized products were actually good for you that would be surprising.
- potamic 4y agoThere is nothing about something being "natural" that makes it inherently safer. Indeed there is nothing that is not natural in fact. Wood ash soap is no different than any other soap you may buy in the market. It only differs in the way that potassium hydroxide, that is used to make soap, is obtained. It doesn't matter whether you obtain potassium hydroxide from wood ash or other industrial methods, it still is potassium hydroxide! Of course in older times burning wood was the only known method of obtaining potassium hydroxide. It doesn't mean it's the best method not does it change the overall outcome in any way. You seem to be taking a diss at science. The point of science is to learn more about things, whether they are old school or modern. Science does not discriminate. People of course bluff in the name of profits for their own gain, but if you do not have knowledge about the things, you won't be able to call out the bluff.
- 4y ago
- LarsDu88 4y agoI always rinse my dishes before using them, even if they've been in the dishwasher. Does anyone else do this?
- Wolfenstein98k 4y agoPost-cleaning, pre-use? Yeah that's very rare, never heard of it.
- djmips 4y agoAlways
- causi 4y agoWe sought to investigate the effects of professional and household dishwashers Interestingly, 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. Is the reader to draw the conclusion that significant levels of rinse-aid are not found in dishes cleaned by home dishwashers? A professional dishwasher completes 1 or 2 wash and rinse cycles using 3.5 L of water per cycle. That's about 1/4 the water usage of a home dishwasher. Does an increased amount of water in home dishwashers result in negligible levels of rinse-aid?
- forgotmypw17 4y agoAs I mentioned in another comment, the easy way to test for this is to take a freshly-dishwashed glass and fill it with water. Look for foamy bubbles that don't clear up quickly around the edge. Then rinse it thoroughly and try again. With most home dishwashers, I have seen evidence of leftovers.
- causi 4y agoIt seems like the easiest solution is to just not use rinse-aid, since the study didn't seem to find any issues with regular detergent.
- forgotmypw17 4y agoI'm not sure if there is any difference?
- causi 4y agoThe difference seems to be that rinse-aids cause health problems and regular detergent doesn't.
- raverbashing 4y agoI think a lot of people use an excessive amount of dishwasher soap Also I'm very suspicious when I fill a glass and it comes out foamy, I rinse them again before drinking from it
- kleton 4y agoSolid dishwasher powder doesn't seem to usually contain detergents. For one brand: Sodium Sulfate Sodium Carbonate Water Copolymer Of Acrylic Maleic And Sulphonic Acids Sodium Silicate Sodium Carbonate Peroxide PEG/PPG/Propylheptyl Ether Fragrances Subtilisin Amylase Enzyme Transitional Metal Catalyst Reactive Green 12 Copolymer Of Acrylic Maleic And Sulphonic Acids
- pja 4y ago> Sulphonic Acids This is probably some kind of detergent, although there are lots of different sulphonic acids.
- DoreenMichele 4y agodecreased transepithelial electrical resistance If you look it up, gut epithelial barrier basically means the mucosal lining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intestinal_mucosal_barrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intestinal_mucosal_barrier Mucus is mostly water, some salt and some biopolymers. Mucus can vary slightly depending on what part of the body produces it, but typically it is made up of 98 percent water, 1 percent salt and 1 percent biopolymers—very long molecules that interact with one another and give mucus that gel-like quality. https://healthtalk.unchealthcare.org/mucus-our-bodys-silent-defender/ https://healthtalk.unchealthcare.org/mucus-our-bodys-silent-... If you add chemicals to what is essentially saline solution, it shouldn't be shocking that the solution changes. The decreased electrical resistance is likely some kind of salt derangement from what I gather. And the biopolymers in mucus are apparently called mucins and -- quick and dirty -- these seem to be glycoproteins, as is true of many immune related things in the human body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucin
- damsellaci 4y agoWhen my HSV symptoms started, I thought I had a yeast infection. The following day, I had a swollen lymph node in my neck behind my ear. A couple days later, I felt stinging on my labia while showering, which I attributed to ingrown hairs. Later, I noticed bleeding and small ulcers. They began with dull pain and tingling, then my entire genital area was swollen and red. I’ve had an outbreak every month like clockwork dealing with the pain, itching and blisters i got tired of antiviral drugs and decided to try herbal medicine, i found Dr. Bulukona Website: bulukonaherbaltemple.wixsite.com/bulukona-temple and i discovered he was a professional in herbal medication and he has helped many people, i contacted him, we talked on phone and i confirmed he was genuine, i did all what he told me to do, i received the medicine, used it as he has prescribed and glory be to God almighty i am completely cured, i went back to my doctor to confirm it. They say there's no cure but my case was different.
- 317070 4y agoI have been having bigger bowel troubles ever since I started working in Google five years ago. They went away during the pandemic, but this week I'm sick with some kind of infection in my abdomen again. I never had that before starting in Google, and I always was able to pretty much eat what I want. Now I don't think it's the food, which is great (and I have been experimenting to see if I could narrow it down). But this article makes me think it might be the cutlery and plates! Or maybe the glasses and cups? Any other Googlers here with similar issues?
- acadapter 4y agoI'm not at Google, but I noticed that I have to rinse the coffee cup with hot water 2-3 times, before I take it to the coffee machine. If I forget to do this, my stomach will hurt. My suspicion is that modern dishwashers use too little water. A colleague has his own coffee cup with a custom design, which he hand-washes. I might do the same.
- djmips 4y agoI've always rinsed my dishes no matter how 'clean' they seem to be from a cupboard. I've noticed the residues and a certain slippery feel under water. I rinse them until they are no longer 'slippery'. This could be a rinse aid or it could be bad rinsing of a detergent. Either way I figured it's not a good idea to ingest detergent or rinse aid.
- forgotmypw17 4y agoWith most dishwashers, if I take a freshly 'washed' class out and fill it with water, I can see foamy bubbles all around the edge of the glass which stay for a while. If I then rinse it a couple times and try again, I see a few bubbles which quickly dissipate.
- modeless 4y agoThat's interesting. I also started having more issues after starting at Google. Particularly with dairy, so I chalked it up to lactose intolerance, but I didn't have those problems so much before.
- alpos 4y agoThe news around this, this thread, and similar on Reddit seem to be assuming a jump that isn't supported in this paper. "The residue remaining after the rinse cycle varies between 1:250 to 1:667 for the dishwasher detergent and 1:2,000 to 1:10,000 dilutions for the rinse aid." This is actually an uncited claim in the paper, and the paper authors did not test it. "In the present study, we hypothesized that if the detergent and rinse aid residues are not completely removed, once dry, they may remain on the surface of the dishware." But then they go on to only test what would happen to gut lining cells if most dishes most of the time had residue on them in such concentrations as they assume would be present, transfer to the food, and make it past the stomach. This line of research really should have started with something like, "we swabbed 50 recently washed and dried dishes from 25 different restaurants using different dish-washing machines. Here is the average concentration of detergent and rinse aid residue on the dry dishes". I get that's not the study they wanted to do, of course; who wants to spend hours and days swabbing dry dishes when you have a decent reason to play with new biotech? But that means the only thing this paper actually looked at is: IF there is residue on the dry dishes, and IF that remains in the assumed concentrations by the time you eat off of it, and IF all of that residue ends up attached to your food, and IF all those chemicals make it past your stomach, let's see what that might do to your gut lining. Not a bad idea for a study, but definitely not what people on the internet are taking this to be. The news articles are promoting that unsupported claim to an assumed fact that there is chemical residue on all the dishes people are eating from and that this is destroying people's gut lining. Most of the headlines around this are something to the effect of: "Commercial Dishwashers Destroy Protective Layer in Gut". Which is pure sensationalism, the paper authors never claim this and this idea is not supported by present evidence.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoI can smell detergent scent on my dishes after a wash and rinse, even if I don’t use rinse aid. Maybe my dishwasher’s rinse cycle isn’t very good: but if so I imagine that I’m not alone. I agree with what you’re saying here in terms of the raw findings, but I wonder if as a society we’re approaching this question wrong. Specifically: if I proved that dishwasher detergents contained a toxic chemical (say: arsenic), shouldn’t dishwasher detergent makers now bear the burden of proof for demonstrating that it doesn’t remain on dishes? And isn’t it reasonable for people to treat this as major, worrying news just based on the precautionary principle?
- CHRIS_LUCAS 4y ago