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Home washing machines fail to remove important pathogens from textiles
- tuatoru 1y agoDo hospitals seriously allow people to launder their own uniforms? That would never be allowed in the food industry.
- iaaan 1y agoWhat do you mean? I've never heard of a restaurant that launders the employees' clothes for them.
- tacker2000 1y agoI would guess that most restaurants already have a laundry service for their tablecloths, etc… which would also take on the staff clothes? But i never worked in a restaurant, just guessing here.
- ender341341 1y agothey probably do aprons and stuff like that but even places with uniforms it's super rare that the restaurant would handle laundering clothing.
- Brian_K_White 1y agorestaurants have laundry service for kitchen pants, jackets, aprons, right along with all the towels, napkins, and tablecloths. They aren't the employees own clothes they got from walmart, they are provided by the laundry service like the towels.
- LadyCailin 1y agoI have worked at sit down dining and fast food, and neither places did my laundry for me. Aprons, sure, but not the rest of the clothes. The clothes which I had to buy in the first place.
- forgetfreeman 1y agoNow I'm wondering where you live because this is definitely not a thing in the overwhelming majority of restaurants in the continental US.
- Brian_K_White 1y agoA few different places in different cities in NY, Albany to Saratoga. Years ago though. Mostly just for the cooks not every dishwasher or waiter.
- closewith 1y agoIn most of the world, most healthcare workers launder their own scrubs and uniforms at home. I used to have a specific washing machine for it because I hated putting forgets uniforms with patient bodily fluids in my normal washing machine. Things like scrubs exchange machines and central laundries washing staff gear is rare even in hospitals in the developed world.
- nadir_ishiguro 1y agoI was a bit surprised by that when I first learned that from a healthcare worker, but it's true. I think this should be taken care of by the employer.
- forgetfreeman 1y agoSo should sane work hours and good pay but here we are.
- OJFord 1y agoIf you mean from the perspective of having to do it/pay for it, you can claim I think it's £6/week for it in the UK if you don't have the option of getting it done at work (but hospitals in general do I believe).
- dylan604 1y agoAfter watching The Pitt, they have a mini-plot line around the scrubs exchange machine like it's a normal thing. It was the first I had ever seen one, but I don't work in the medical industry. It felt like something used just to allow for the script to work.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoAfter seeing that machine, the only way I could make sense of that machine being used is a corrupt hospital exec buying it from their cousin’s company or something.
- 1y ago
- zabzonk 1y agoI don't know about today, but when I worked in microbiology in the 70s & 80s all our lab coats and similar clothing were washed in central facilities - in most hospitals, the central laundry was (and still is) one of the biggest facilities in the hospital.
- danesparza 1y agoYes, but does the central laundry wash all nurse and med tech uniforms? I would be genuinely surprised if the answer was "yes". I'm willing to bet they launder bed linens almost exclusively. (And perhaps the food service uniforms) :-)
- zabzonk 1y agoAs I said, I don't know what the exact situation is today, but they certainly did. Would you want us to be sitting on a bus, contaminated with pathogens?
- danesparza 1y agoI ask because my wife was a hospital nurse for 5 years (including during the beginning and peak of Covid) at a large hospital in the US. The hospital definitely did not wash their uniforms.
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y agoNor firefighting PPE.
- c12 1y agoYes. When I started working in hospitals it wasn't the case. We had an onsite laundry facility and tailor. You would obtain your uniform from the tailors, tailor made to fit, they would also repair any damaged uniform. You would place worn uniform in a bag labeled with your name and drop if off at the laundry to collect the next day. Then privatisation came, first they shut down the tailors and you were expected to both purchase your uniform and pay for alterations and repairs (costs you could claim back as a tax rebate if you knew how, how not being advertised.) Then they privatised the laundry, shutting down the one on site and shifting everything to a central location, by everything I mean just the bedding, you were now expected to wash your uniform at home. The only exception I am aware of is Surgical scrubs, those were provided in sterile wraps and were to be returned to a certain laundry bin for cleaning. You're right about the food industry, when I worked in kitchens that days uniform was provided, freshly cleaned and returned for laundering at the end of my shift.
- danesparza 1y ago"Allow" is a funny word. "Require" might be more appropriate. And I agree - the medical industry (specifically in the United States) cares more about profit than care. It's nuts.
- OJFord 1y agoIn the UK I believe you're not supposed to, other than briefly during covid, but it's (still) common. Also though, you think people buying & wearing their own Figs scrubs would get them back if they put them in the hospital laundry service? And what about non-scrubs for that matter?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lallysingh 1y agoI'll wager the ones that do the poorest job in removing pathogens are also the most power and water efficient. Trade-offs matter.
- userbinator 1y agoI'm not familiar with the machines in this article, but you can look up the specs on them and see what you find.
- cowfarts 1y ago[dead]
- wnissen 1y agoSince less water would increase the detergent concentration, I was wondering if the opposite was the case. My family's old washer filled up the entire tub with water, so any detergent (and any pathogen, to be fair) would be quite diluted. Short cycle length certainly makes sense to be correlated with pathogens. The lousy LG "TurboWash" only takes 28 minutes to do a full load of laundry but certainly doesn't get very much clean in that time. I have to admit it was surprising that textiles have been identified as the source of hospital acquired infections. You'd think that even if the laundering didn't eliminate pathogens, it would greatly reduce them and make any clusters more diffuse.
- fwipsy 1y agoAs I understand, it's been identified as one possible vector, not conclusively proven to be the only (or even largest) source.
- fuzzfactor 1y agoRemember the way VW had a digital deception built in to some of their cars that adjusted the emissions when it detected they were being monitored? Seems like I ended up with a software-controlled washer that is not very straightforward in its behavior and it may have something to do with energy rating. There's no setting to get a hot rinse, not even a warm rinse, as expected. All those were taken away decades ago on purely mechanical models anyway, but at least a "hot" wash is still there. A mainstream US washer uses the household hot water supply though, they do not self-heat the water. You have two separate water inlets to the machine, one for hot water, one for cold. You put in the laundry, start a hot cycle, and the drum starts to fill by opening only the hot water supply. It keeps filling whether the top lid is open or shut but it will not start agitating unless the lid is down. When the lid is open, you can feel how hot the water is as it pours in. As soon as you shut the lid, the cold water opens up too at full blast even though you just wanted hot. You can hear it and feel it for a second if you open the lid, but then that cuts off the cold and all you get is hot as long as it's open. Saves a lot of energy when things are not as hot as people think they are.
- OutOfHere 1y agoMaybe use a long cycle for the washer.
- comrade1234 1y ago60C held for 15+ minutes should be enough for sterilization. The research paper says they washed at 60C but that the quick cycle was especially poor at sterilization. Other than that I didn’t read the paper closer to see if it was a temperature control problem or not enough time at 60C or something else.
- chewbacha 1y agoA hot dry cycle will also help with this through desiccation but is more damaging to clothing. Should be fine for scrubs though.
- neodypsis 1y agoNot true. It depends on the pathogen.
- jeroenhd 1y agoIt depends on what you're trying to do. Some bacteria and viruses will survive 60 degrees. There's a reason running a very hot wash (>60C) can quickly get rid of weird smells inside of a washing machine occasionally. Extra annoying: enabling eco mode (the one that is tested when generating the power usage stats on the sticker for these machines) on some machines will make it run "60 degree equivalent", which usually means "longer but at a lower temperature", which obviously doesn't work for sterilization at all. Of course, this is rarely an issue for consumers who don't need to sterilize their clothes (except when a family member is sick with some specific illness maybe?). But, for hospital workers, which this paper is about, that's a different story.
- blitzar 1y ago> means "longer but at a lower temperature", which obviously doesn't work for sterilization at all Lower temperatures (e.g. 30-40 degrees C) may even provide a better environment for bateria and/or viruses to grow.
- switch007 1y agoDon't get me started on eco! Now with heat pump dryers barely heating to 45c only your washing machine can do the job now. And you need a specific function to hold a higher temperature as back in the olden days. The 90c cycle is the only one I fully trust to get proper hot but I can't wash everything at 90
- tehjoker 1y agoHard to know what to make of this when the types of detergent are not disclosed. I recall in 2022, Oxyclean was recommended for destroying MPOX virions.
- gpm 1y agoFor what it's worth the supplemental methods file has this to say about the detergents selected > Two commonly used UK washing detergents were selected for the assay: a non-biological liquid detergent (15-30%:Anionic surfactants; 5-15%:nonionic surfactants; <5%:phosphonate, perfume, soap, optical brighteners, methylisothiazolinone, octylisothiazolinone) and a non-biological powder detergent (5-15%: oxygen-based bleaching agents, anionic surfactants; <5%: nonionic surfactants, polycarboxylates, soap, perfume, phosphonates, optical brighteners, zeolites) This doesn't really mean anything to me, but maybe it means something to you? In some sense I think the real takeaway from the study is "we shouldn't be having healthcare workers wash their own patient/pathogen facing uniforms", and that takeaway seems robust against the hypothesis that only some detergents would solve the problem. As a population we can be sure that some of the healthcare workers are going to use the detergents that don't solve the problem.
- tehjoker 1y agoThe second one sounds similar to oxyclean.
- twic 1y agoInteresting, the materials and methods says: > Each wash cycle was performed with either biological (14g per kilogram of fabric) or non-biological detergents (20g per wash). But your quoted passage describes two non-biological detergents. So did they use a biological detergent or not? Anyway, the first one sounds like Persil liquid: https://www.ocado.com/products/persil-laundry-washing-liquid-detergent-non-bio-53-washes-524869011 https://www.ocado.com/products/persil-laundry-washing-liquid... > 15-30%: Anionic surfactants. 5-15%: Nonionic surfactants. <5%: Perfume, Phosphonates, Soap, Optical brighteners, Methylisothiazolinone, Octylisothiazolinone And the second one sounds like Persil powder: https://www.ocado.com/products/persil-fabric-cleaning-washing-powder-non-bio-77-washes-578954011 https://www.ocado.com/products/persil-fabric-cleaning-washin... > 5-15%: Oxygen-based bleaching agents, Anionic surfactants. <5% Nonionic surfactants, Polycarboxylates, Soap, Perfume, Optical brighteners, Zeolites, Tetramethyl acetyloctahydronaphthelenes Not quite the same, but similar. Both are perfectly normal brand-name household laundry detergents.
- userbinator 1y agoThe ones in this study are all relatively new front-loaders. I would've liked to see some much older and top-loader machines in there too, along with "traditional" TSP-based detergent.
- neodypsis 1y agoYou need to add sanitizer to the wash cycle, not just detergent.
- timrichard 1y agoI agree… I add a capful of something like this if I think the wash needs it : https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/312705939 https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/312705939
- xyzzy123 1y agoThat's why you dry your clothes on the washing line in the sun?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nemomarx 1y agoDo a lot of apartments have access to a washing line? Also seems kinda slow?
- xyzzy123 1y agoThis is fair - no it won't work in every situation, just didn't see good old air and sunshine mentioned in the thread anywhere. Surely the only scalable solution in a medical context is to get workers to change out of uniform at work and hand over to industrial laundry service, everything else relies on procedure outside the work environment which not everyone is going to do reliably and is difficult to supervise / QC.
- whiterock 1y agoslow? much faster than hanging them up to dry inside
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y agoDepends a lot on the climate and season.
- m463 1y agoI like Dr Annie's laundry experiments: https://www.dranniesexperiments.com/laundry-experiments https://www.dranniesexperiments.com/laundry-experiments
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 1y agoWell c difficile is an exception rather than the rule in terms of resilience
- eth0up 1y agoFirst, I neither have an eidetic memory or links to the patents nor lawsuit. However.... I remember finding a lawsuit, if I remember correctly, between Samsung and a certain municipality of an unremembered state. The patent involved a lining within surfaces of the washing and drying systems for hospitals which impart silver particles. The marketing part suggested it would spare x amount of bleach and have equal or greater efficacy. The municipal water waste management objected based on the breakdown phase of the sewage relying on bacteria. The silver, they surmised, would obviously hinder this process and so on. Then, as a side note, you have products from waste management called eg Sludge, which is used as fertilizer. Supposedly it is forbidden on vegetable crops, but I once interviewed a cattle rancher who said his subsidies were dependent on his acceptance and use of Sludge. Further aside, the real problem here is the 'forever chemicals' that accompany these products. It tends to permanently compromise the land it's used on. I remember the rancher telling me he's seen his cows chewing on condoms.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Ferret7446 1y agoFor almost 100% of the history of washing textiles, sterilization was never even remotely a goal. In most cases, sterilization is undesirable and would likely contribute to the growing proportion of autoimmune deficiencies. Do you also sterilize your kitchenware? Well, given the population bias of HN, probably some of you do, but the vast majority of humankind do not. If you don't sterilize things you put into your mouth, I don't see why you'd expect this for clothes. So it is amazingly unsurprising that consumer washing machines don't sterilize clothes. Just as you need to take extra care to sterilize kitchenware when you're doing anything fermenty, hospitals shouldn't have been relying on home washing machines.
- kadoban 1y agoDishwashers get _quite_ hot for a long period of time, and there's relatively harsh chemicals in there too. Does anything realistically survive that anyway?
- lukan 1y agoSome pathogens also survive hard radiation in space. Even desinfection does not kill everything. https://xkcd.com/1161/ https://xkcd.com/1161/ Also no need to, bacteri and virus are a normal thing. The problem is, if too many of the wrong type get in your system. So reducing them in general (and also normal washing machines do that) is mostly sufficient. (And dishwashers indeed kill microscopic life with heat and chemicals, but that is a side effect of cleaning)
- sct202 1y agoSometimes a red/pink film will start to grow in my dishwasher especially under the filter grate. I use a dishwasher sanitizer to kill it.
- deeThrow94 1y agoProbably also a sign you're using too much detergent.
- aaronbaugher 1y ago
- saagarjha 1y agoI thought that was the point of the dryer? The washing machine just removes dirt.
- v1ne 1y agoWell, it's a bold hypothesis that a household washing machine should sterilise clothes. It's a machine to reduce the load of microorganisms to a manageable level and to remove dirt, fat, and odours. I don't get how the authors arrive at their hypothesis. Before washing machines, people washed clothes with their hands. Cooking them in a pot was only viable with very robust fabrics made from cotton/hemp/flax. I seriously doubt that the microbial load would have been lower before the invention of washing machines. And with older washing machines, using those nasty aggressive washing agents: Maybe, but your clothes would not last that long (there's this difference between old US-style washing machines that just stir and don't heat and EU washing machines that have a drum that turns and always heat the water). And then, "potential pathogens" in the biofilm in the machine. Ah, well. My skin and mouth are also full of potential pathogens. I don't know what this study is trying to show. Washing machines are not sterile, I guess.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> don't get how the authors arrive at their hypothesis They didn't. The “health care workers who wash their uniforms at home" did.
- avereveard 1y agoWhy would Healthcare worker do laundry at home with potentially contaminated uniform? Probably that is the thing to address first.
- DebtDeflation 1y ago>your clothes would not last that long Washing on cold or warm, gentle cycle, and then either tumble drying on low or hang drying will greatly extend the life of your clothes. Washing on hot with a more vigorous cycle and then drying on hot not only risks shrinkage in the short term but will cause your clothes to wear out and fall apart much faster.
- ajuc 1y agoIn Europe most people don't use cloth dryiers. You just hang the clothes on lines (usually on your balcony or in your bathroom if you live in a flat, or in your backyard if you live in a detached home). Clothes are dry the next day anyway, what's the rush? I wonder if the UV from sun vs the longer time to dry results in less bacteria overall.
- bgro 1y agoAre people perplexed by the prevalence of bacteria in residential washing machines? That’s what the smell is when clothes are left wet for too long or the door is left open, preventing drying. Though I wonder what effect a standard load with bleach would have when used in a load or if that’s simply what the article refers to as their disinfectant test.
- c12 1y agoI guess a lot of people don't leave the door open so the machine can dry between loads. None of my washing machines have had issue with smell but I also run a 90 degree boil wash once a month to clean things out. It's almost as though people forget these are machines that require maintenance and cleaning.
- ndr42 1y agoWe had bad smell with just drying all reachable areas and leaving open the door, cleaning everything that is easy disassembled (tubes, water outlet area of the pump) from tine to time. 2 months ago we discovered the boil wash. With some detergent containing bleach it stopped the smell, even if we leave the machine closed during the day. I our case it's not we have forgotten but never discovered this function.
- myself248 1y agoMy Maytag Neptune retains so much water from the previous load, that leaving it open is absolutely ineffective. It molds after 3-4 days no matter what. I can spin the drum after leaving it open for 2 weeks, and it still makes a pronounced sloshing noise, there's still a ton of water left in there. I suspect this was meant to reduce the fill water used in the subsequent load, but that's only sensible if you're doing laundry every day or two. If you go longer between washing sessions, it's just making clothes stinky. Perhaps it's backwash from water left in the discharge hose after the pump shuts off? So for years, I just run the first cycle empty, hot, with a bunch of bleach. It wastes more water than this stupid measure could ever possibly save, but it keeps my clothes from being stinky. That machine was just damaged in a flood so I'm shopping for a replacement as I write this, and I cannot for the life of me find this information in any reviews. Does it drain fully? How much water is left behind? A friend pointed out that some machines have a little pigtail hose out the back with a manual drain valve on it, presumably meant to completely empty the machine before transport. Their theory is that I could put a solenoid valve on this and install my own tiny pump to finish draining the machine after a session, possibly a peristaltic pump which wouldn't be susceptible to backflow from the lift. But again, I can't find information in the reviews about whether any given new machine I might buy, has this little drain pigtail.
- jimnotgym 1y agoDna of a bacteria being in your machine surely doesn't mean there are live bacteria in the machine
- bob1029 1y agoDrying is far more destructive to pathogens. The "sanitize" option is on the dryer, not the washer. On my dryer, it says "sanitize with regular fabric selected (and manual time set to maximum)".
- PicassoCTs 1y ago? You dont cook the cloths in a auto-clave- you just move it in warm water with soap- and the soap dissolves the fatty hull of the pathogens. Of course you can still detect them- the dna is still there floating around.
- MarkMarine 1y agoWith the prevalence of vanity scrubs from figs now I doubt most nurses and doctors I’ve seen recently are throwing their fancy scrubs into the communal wash.
- tiahura 1y agoWhat if you use that Lysol laundry disinfectant?
- osigurdson 1y agoIt's little suspicious that the paper was written by George Jefferson.
- endoblast 1y agoWould adding Oxi Clean or somesuch powder to the wash help to sterilize clothing?
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoHeadline caveat: specifically for medical staff. I didn't realize they have to wash their own work clothes, I always assumed that was done by a professional company using high temperatures and specialized products, if it was even washed to begin with instead of incinerated. The more you know.
- piombisallow 1y agoThis is why I hate seeing all the medical people in their scrubs in the supermarket and coffeeshops around campus.
- knowitnone 1y agowait. nobody ever claimed washing machines killed bacterium. When I have a biohazard, I certainly don't throw it into a washing machine and certainly not with other clothing.
- tim333 1y agoI read another article testing this. The conclusion was similar in that all programs failed to get rid of all pathogens but all you had to do to achieve that was to put some bleach in the wash.
- hnick 1y agoFrom a skim it looks like the highest setting tested was 60°C which can kill, but wouldn't be considered sufficient in all cases for food safety for example. My own washing machine is nothing special (front-loader Euromaid, whatever was cheap ~10 years ago) and you can manually bump to temperature up to 70/80/90°C for a cycle (which adds some time). I haven't measured it though to see how accurate it is and I'd imagine 90°C at least isn't great for those rubbery painted patterns or general clothing integrity either. I started using the higher temperatures occasionally since I have some old t-shirts, but I always have to stop wearing them since the underarms develop a crust - I guess it's some kind of bio-reaction between me, my bacteria ride hitchers, and deodorant. Higher temps do seem to delay this build-up (which seems impossible to clean off), but does seem to reduce the life expectancy of the clothing. When I see people (mostly women) still wearing shirts they got in high school, it makes me a little envious. Mine got that issue in < 5 years before changing the wash temps :(