Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids(jacionline.org)

551 pointsby miduil4 anni fa411 comments

Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(22)01477-4/fulltext

419 comments

magila4 anni fa

I 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.

runnerup4 anni fa

There are so, so many cases like this with modern chemicals. Air fresheners in office bathrooms being another major “ghost” aggravation is another one.

In general I low-key proselytize the practice of removing excess stuff from air using HEPA and carbon filters to make a space smell better, rather than adding even more shit to the air (candles, scented sprays, etc). Also the benefits of using “free and clear” products. And using just water or water+soap with a rag to clean countertops/surfaces rather than weird chemical disinfectants that leave a microbial-toxic film of chemicals on the surfaces like Pledge.

I personally use marijuana-growing carbon scrubbers to clean my home air, see TerraBloom products. It’s made a massive difference for my family.

wnkrshm4 anni fa

I'm allergic to lemonenes ('citrus/orange smell'), the oil in the shell of citrus fruits. It's in everything. Deodorant, soap, detergent, various cleaners etc.

Every time there's some sort of "better smell" somewhere, where it's just "nice to have" I think: why? Why have this as well on top of everything?

DoreenMichele4 anni fa

Probably someone just trying to make a buck.

We all gotta eat and doing something "meaningful" often seems like the worst possible way to try to keep a roof over your head. Doing something seemingly trivial that you imagine won't be controversial and that will be a "nice to have" for enough people to pay your own bills probably seems to some people like the best way to get by in this world.

And they probably didn't think anyone was allergic to something so seemingly trivial and didn't think it could be a big deal in that way.

Edit: I'm on your side if that's not clear. I spend a lot of time wondering how we solve this and my hypothesis is we first understand why this crap happens and I think "we all gotta eat" is, unfortunately, a root cause of a lot of ills in the world today and I don't know how we fix it.

eMPee5844 anni fa

Your statement

> "we all gotta eat" is […] root cause of a lot of ills in the world today

hits the nail quite well I think. People are forced to generate income, even when that is to the detriment of other people or the environment. Natural resources are exploited without restraint, factories keep producing incompatible, low quality electronics and online services that harm mental health but create a profit are pushed onto markets with great vigor.

But with the advent of machines of human-level ability (physical & cognitive), within the next decade, human labour will not be competitive any more. This provides us a unique opportunity to overcome the traditional compulsions of our current growth-fixated economic framework and transition to a steady-state, cooperative economy (aka RBE) instead. That means leaving behind barter trade and local optimization for individual or company profit, paving the way to a good life for all, without time pressure and compulsory work. We (Open Source Ecology Germany) are actually working on getting funding (via PrototypeFund.de) for a cooperative economy simulation game.. To make it easier for people to imagine a post-capitalist economy and to start working on rules and organisational mechanisms for such a society. HN is invited oc ; )

bootlooped4 anni fa

I use a similar setup just for near my cat litter box. Almost totally eliminates pet smell. I have an AC Infinity fan I really like, it's very quiet on the lowest 3 of 8 speeds. The filter is just some generic brand. I never want to own pets without this level of air filtration again.

TheBlerch4 anni fa

No offense intended, but the best way to reduce any potential odors from your cat’s box is simply to pick it up regularly. Several times per day when my partner or I pass the box we scoop it and place the waste in a sealed bag in a sealed bucket. Takes 30 seconds. Never had issues with odors and the cats appreciate a clean box, just as any person appreciates a clean bathroom (more so for cats with their stronger sense of smell). And from time to time fully empty and wash down the box tray with soap. We’ve been shocked by how poorly many people maintain their cat boxes, which leads to the misconception that cats are smelly. They are incredibly clean animals, far cleaner than we humans. And we’ve been asked by some guests why our house doesn’t have that “pet/cat smell.” Empty the box regularly, you’ll be amazed by the results.

rodent_rodeo4 anni fa

Counter point: I don’t eat raw uncooked mice nor lick my excrement shoot. Then again maybe it’s because I have unrefined country barn cats who are lacking culture.

germinalphrase4 anni fa

Do you use the carbon scrubbers in-line with your HVAC or did you rig of some kind of stand alone system?

runnerup4 anni fa

Stand-alone. I got two cylindrical carbon filters and one fan. I slide the three components together and then stand them up vertically like a floor standing speaker.

Currently living in an apartment. It scrubs the air really quite fast. Helps a lot with kitchen smoke, pet smells, cleaning chemical vapors, and new furniture/plastic VOCs.

I also live in the middle of a bunch of chemical plants so it’s invaluable for the 3-5 leak events we experience every week.

One of our cats has learned how to turn our HPA300 fan to “turbo mode” by bopping the correct button with his paw. This year he’s been an excellent early warning system for nearby chemical plant leaks and I’ve learned to blindly trust his judgment so I just turn the scrubber fan to 100% whenever the cat turns up our largest HEPA air filter.

I recognize this sounds insane.

bharrisonit4 anni fa

Please indicate the correct kind of cat to complete the BOM for this system.

runnerup4 anni fa

My BOM:

- $199: TerraBloom 6" Silenced EC Inline Duct Fan, ECMF-150-S, 288 CFM, 36W

- $114: TERRABLOOM 6" AIR FILTER 24" LONG, 1.8" (46MM) THICK,

- $80: TERRABLOOM 6" AIR FILTER 16" LONG, 1.8" (46MM) THICK

- $3,000 (2022 prices): Siberian cat. Bought before recent price rises where the prices have apparently more than doubled, somewhat killing my dream of getting another Siberian kitten. Closely related to Maine Coon and Norwegian Forest Cat. Very very very playful and social. Enjoys playing friendly games of tackle with my Texas Heeler dog (50% Australian Cattle Dog, 50% Australian Shepherd), and often can be found entertaining itself throughout the day by training my dog. Naturally played fetch with plastic water bottle caps from a young age. Wants lots, and lots, and lots, of cuddles and play time. Our other Siberian, which was imported from Russia by American breeders, has had a very rough life and joined us late in her life. She has a very similar natural temperament. All three shed a truly totally insane amount of fur -- recommend Miele vacuums which are fully sealed with proper gaskets for maximum suction and minimum allergen leaking/spreading...Dyson strongly not recommended. He has had a lifelong fascination with dissecting electromechanical objects, especially air filters, and insists to supervise/assist with all maintenance work going on in the home. He learned that biting apple cables causes humans to stop using the laptop and destroyed $1,000 of laptop chargers when first generation MagSafe charges had non-detachable cables. Unlike his older sister, he has never had interest in killing/murdering animals, but enjoys removing all the legs from cockroaches and then playing fetch with himself by throwing the body around. Announces most of his poops with a loud meow and insists that the litter box be maintained daily. Enjoys training the humans, especially enjoys training the dog to get the humans to perform desired behaviors on his behalf. Contrary to marketing materials, neither Siberian is actually "hypoallergenic" in any sense of the word...maybe they're "less" allergenic but they still cause a lot of allergies and sheets/pillowcases need to be changed often.

I'd probably go 8" if I was buying today, I hedged a bit cheaper because I wasn't sure if the quality/performance would be what I needed.

TheBlerch4 anni fa

Thanks for sharing your air filter setup. How large is the space you’re filtering with your setup and how many months do the Terrabloom filters last before you have to change them? Also where’s the HEPA component of the system? (Agree about Miele vacuums with a HEPA filter insert, which is supposed to be changed annually. Mieles also last forever with minor maintenance).

runnerup4 anni fa

700 sq. Ft. So far 9 months with the terrabloom and no noticeable degradation of filtration. HEPA provided by 7 other filters, mostly Coways. Those need filters changed every 2 months.

Agree with Miele ease of maintenance, though they immediately stopped providing OEM parts (belts) for the uprights the day they discontinued them. They still sell the expensive bags for them though.

tpxl4 anni fa

> recommend Miele vacuums which are fully sealed with proper gaskets for maximum suction and minimum allergen leaking/spreading...Dyson strongly not recommended

Have you tried a water vaccuum? :)

someweirdperson4 anni fa

Is that a vacuum cleaner that can suck water, or are there vacuums that use water to clean the exhaust like scrubbers on ships do?

joshenders4 anni fa

There is actually, it’s called Rainbow Vacuum. They used to (maybe still do?) sell them door to door MLM style but the vacuum is actually good in my experience with them.

larsnystrom4 anni fa

My mother has one of these, but I didn't know its name until now! I actually remember the salesman coming to our home and showing us how it works. It's still going strong ~25 years later. I'm currently using a Miele something, but I'm always a little weirded out by the fact I have to change vacuum bags, because when I grew up we would just flush the dust down the toilet after vacuuming.

Now that I know what my mother's vacuum is called I'm a little tempted to get one myself...

anonymouse0084 anni fa

Funny thing as it pertains to this thread is the Rainbow salesmen used to sell an air freshener or early essential oil to add to the water. I can recall the smell perfectly now

last_responder4 anni fa

Probably works like a water pipe aka bong

dzhiurgis4 anni fa

To sibling comment: bongs cool down smoke, not filter it

krageon4 anni fa

If they only cooled it down, the water wouldn't be so incredibly disgusting

runnerup4 anni fa

I tested this in college, they definitely also filter it. Just not very well. But 3+ chamber bubblers do filter fairly well.

Still, if you’re looking for that, edibles and temperature-controlled vaporizers are way to go.

pcthrowaway4 anni fa

This is like poetry. First comment I've "favourited" on HN that isn't explaining some deeply technical thing I want to reference later

hackernewds4 anni fa

This made my week

mschuster914 anni fa

> I recognize this sounds insane.

The insane thing is not your cat - cats are damn smart if they want to. The insane thing is that leak events happen multiple times a week and nothing seems to happen, or that residential zoning is right next to heavy industry in the first place. WTF?

runnerup4 anni fa

Agreed. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33427667 for a detailed explanation.

I also constantly rant about the zoning thing. Even if you believe people should be allowed to live where they want, there should be more information provided to help dramatically lower the price of that housing but the apartments cost about the same as apartments in cleaner parts of the city 60 miles away.

fooblaster4 anni fa

I think I'm going to try this. A little concerned about the wobbly-ness of the vertical stack of all of these given the weight of the filters. Seems like all these systems are intended to be ceiling mounted to grow tents. Wish there was a nice metal frame that could be used to floor-mount this setup a little more elegantly.

Obscurity43404 anni fa

That is the damndest thing

hammock4 anni fa

What size did you get and what size is your apartment? Just looked up Terrabloom and I want these yesterday.

runnerup4 anni fa

I would personally get the silenced fans in the largest diameter you can afford / fits in your desired space because it will move larger amounts of air more quietly. The apartment was 700 sq. ft. I got the silenced 6" and it's reasonably quiet at most speeds, and not that loud at the highest speed -- putting filters at both intake and outlet greatly reduced the noise vs. just one side.

If you get the filters and fans in the same diameter they will just slip together without any additional hardware. But it will be quite wobbly. I used velcro (monoprice, laying around for wire-taming) to secure it to a vertical bookshelf.

My BOM: - $199: TerraBloom 6" Silenced EC Inline Duct Fan, ECMF-150-S, 288 CFM, 36W

- $114: TERRABLOOM 6" AIR FILTER 24" LONG, 1.8" (46MM) THICK,

- $80: TERRABLOOM 6" AIR FILTER 16" LONG, 1.8" (46MM) THICK

I'd probably go 8" if I was buying today, I hedged a bit cheaper because I wasn't sure if the quality/performance would be what I needed. This has been running for 9 months now with almost no noticeable degradation in performance, although I'm not currently quantifying it. Eventually I intend to install 3 VOC sensors, one outside the unit near the intake, one inside the unit, and one outside the unit at the outlet....to measure the VOC scrubbing efficiency curve over time and assist in deciding when to replace the carbon.

We've been running it 24 hours per day, usually about 40% but sometimes at the lowest setting (maybe 25%) and sometimes at the highest 100% setting.

After 9 months, it can still use it for point sources of concentrated smells like soldering and it captures 100% of the odors. And this is operating in a high-VOC environment near a lot (dozens) of chemical plants on our side of the city.

birken4 anni fa

I've been running a similar setup next to my litter box for about 2 years using "Vivosun" products, which seem like a cheaper knockoff version of Terrabloom.

The Terrabloom stuff looks higher quality and I can't compare it directly to Vivosun, but I've got no complaints about my Vivosun duct fan or carbon filters. I'm not necessarily suggesting one brand over the other, but just to add that you can run a knockoff version of this setup for a lower cost.

ornornor4 anni fa

I’m trying to picture the systems. They’re basically a carbon filter sandwiched by two fans, it runs the air through the filter and puts it back in the room? Or is it connected to a vent that exhausts the air outside (or does it filter one coming outside air?)

runnerup4 anni fa

In my case, a fan sandwiched by two filters. Recirculates through room so filtration will follow the differential equation models for “CSTR’s”, which are Constantly Stirred Tank Reactors.

TheBlerch4 anni fa

Which Vivosun products do you use and how large is your space? Is there a HEPA filter in the system, or only carbon?

lend0004 anni fa

Love coming to HN and learning from the in-depth research of others on topics like these.

How important do you think the external fan is? (versus just placing it next to the modest airflow of a HEPA filter, as a sibling commenter suggested)

runnerup4 anni fa

Very important. “Non-ducted” suction doesn’t have enough static pressure to pull air through a carbon filter, will pull the air around it instead. In electrical terms, this would be like feeding a power sink with a large gauge copper wire and a medium resistance resistor in parallel. 0.01% of the electricity will pull through the resistor, 99.9% will come through the bare copper wire.

rngname224 anni fa

the one major downside you'll find to terrabloom is how often you have to replace the carbon filters, but that's just true of carbon air filtering in general.

phil-martin4 anni fa

This really interests me, and I want to set up a similar system.

Can you describe the massive difference it’s made for family?

runnerup4 anni fa

I live in the middle of a lot of chemical plants. They have leaks constantly, like 3-5 moderate events per week.

Different chemicals cause disparate effects on my wife and I, but often manifests as anxiety, asthma, lethargy, general sense of being very uncomfortable.

Additionally we have two cats and a dog in a small apartment and sometimes they pee on the carpet/etc.

The carbon scrubber reduces the noticeable chemical plant effects down to just once a week, and greatly minimize that as well. Has completely eliminated stress caused by residual pet pee vapors.

We do have a bissell big green machine that we use regularly to clean the carpets and lots of HEPA air filters for dander, pollen, and other particulates.

But knocking out VOCs using a carbon scrubber has truly been wonderful. Works very very well whenever we get new furniture etc that offgasses for a week or so.

hackernewds4 anni fa

> marijuana-growing carbon scrubbers to clean my home air

Would you mind expanding on that?

azinman24 anni fa

Just repurposed from a company called terrabloom. I use their fans with a duct as a diy solder fume extractor. It’s a very powerful fan.

avanai4 anni fa

OK I read this as carbon-scrubbers which grow marijuana. I dunno, maybe it helps oxygenate the air. Or maybe I haven’t had coffee yet.

nano94 anni fa

I have a similar tale to tell. Ever since I've taken activated charcoal regularly, I have felt considerable improvement in my digestion and overall well-being. I feel happier, even. The charcoal is "sourced from non-GMO coconuts" which I don't necessarily believe but I take it as a sign that it's a higher quality product instead of repackaged industrial waste (like a lot of the market probably is).

I take 1000mg of activated charcoal per day and feel better. It is paradoxical, because all charcoal does is absorb. It makes me think that everything we put into our bodies nowadays is poison. And if all charcoal does is absorb, maybe most foods are a net negative. My interest in fasting has piqued as a result.

I think we are entering an era of rampant industrialization wherein the products (food, soaps, cookware coatings, packaging materials, etc.) are not necessarily the best products on the market, but simply cost effective enough to put on the shelves--meaning if waste can get on the shelf through clever marketing and engineering then it will.

rapnie4 anni fa

Not directly related to the food products as your refer to them, but a couple of years ago there was the big Cradle-to-Cradle "Waste is Food" hype. Loved by many companies and governments. As a result in The Netherlands this whole paper bureaucracy appeared where through all kinds of tricks you can transform almost any waste back into 'building materials' that are good for the market again. In many cases waste processing became extra profitable. Companies get paid for waste removal at some industry, do the magic transformation tricks, and sell building material at premium price.

So waste = food = money literally without much processing, and effectively just waste = money. A process where waste conveniently disappears on paper only and is spread out over the lands without many people complaining. It is like waste processing of the 60's but way smarter.

noduerme4 anni fa

Literally "spread out over the lands"...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/19/us-state...

m4634 anni fa

I wonder about sulfates, specifically SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate - which has many whack-a-mole names). SLS is a surficant, and although not named in this study, it has been shown in other studies to interfere with mucous membranes (canker sores, etc)

I would wonder if that happens in the gut too.

It is in many things. toothpaste, shampoo, dishwasher and laundry detergents, and lots more

Since people are trying to avoid SLS, MANY tricky marketing synonyms have appeared to obfuscate ingredient lists:

https://chem.nlm.nih.gov/chemidplus/rn/151-21-3

blibble4 anni fa

> Since people are trying to avoid SLS, MANY tricky marketing synonyms have appeared to obfuscate ingredient lists:

this seems to be almost the definition of evil

people are trying to avoid something specific that makes them ill, so they try to hide it from them instead?

scum

jamal-kumar4 anni fa

The best part is all SLS does is contribute to the foaming of the toothpaste, that's literally all it does (Same thing in soap). It's just to give some psychological idea that foamy toothpaste cleans better. Something like a focus group in the 1950s came up with this ingredient.

kragen4 anni fa

no

it's a surfactant

surfactants emulsify lipids in polar liquids like water

such emulsification is crucial to many kinds of cleaning

because cell membranes are lipid bilayers surfactants also can cause cytolysis, maybe relevant if you're trying to get bacterial films off your teeth, and sds is commonly used for this in bio labs

surfactants also often foam but this is irrelevant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_dodecyl_sulfate

jamal-kumar4 anni fa

I could imagine there's better surfactants than that out there, you sound correct and now i feel my dentist is full of lies

kragen4 anni fa

research papers in biomedical fields often drip with disdain for 'practitioners' (doctors, dentists, nurses, etc.) because their knowledge of chemistry, epidemiology, genomics, etc., is so limited and often wrong

i'd like to see one of those statisticians save an abscessed motherfucking molar though

anyway your dentist is probably not actually being bribed by tom's of maine, he just knows a lot of his patients had less canker sores when they stopped using toothpaste with dish detergent in it

because guess what else has cell membranes

egberts14 anni fa

Worse, these SLS gets the EPA Safe Product seal too.

https://www.epa.gov/saferchoice/safer-ingredients#searchList

ornornor4 anni fa

Welcome to late stage capitalism I guess.

rubicon334 anni fa

I used to get canker sores every once in a while.

I cut out SLS by purchasing Toms toothpaste, and that helped a lot.

I would still get them though, maybe twice a year.

The thing that finally fixed it was almonds. I stopped eating almonds and I’ve never had a canker sore since.

bluecalm4 anni fa

No idea about canker sores but cold sores outbreaks (caused by the herpes virus) are linked to almonds consumption because they are heavy in arginine and don't have much lysine.

hackernewds4 anni fa

Same effect for me. SLS toothpaste gives me canker sores. Or at least prevents their healing

bredren4 anni fa

I also had to switch from SLS toothpaste. I used to use a thing called Rembrandt gentle, but they stopped selling that so I started using something called Squigle, which has atrocious branding but is just fine.

I have some amount of uncooked nut allergy and chocolate allergy that causes similar effects to SLS toothpaste. I'm still trying to figure it out.

I wanted to pass along this product I found a few years ago that really changed the game for me though, check out "Durham's Bee Farm, Inc. Canker-Rid."

This has been a problem for me since I was a kid, and all we had back then was Campho-Phenique and pain killing gels. Those things were / are awful. This bee stuff is absolutely amazing. 10/10 check it out.

mwigdahl4 anni fa

I'm also SLS sensitive. I found "Verve" toothpaste on Amazon. Reasonable minty taste, cheap, and SLS-free. There are options out there but you really have to search hard for them.

chadcmulligan4 anni fa

I've had mouth ulcers (canker sores) all my life.

Things I've found that cause them:

- Pineapple

- Lemon/Lime juice

- Chilli

- Sometimes Chocolate

Things that prevent/reduce them:

B6/B12/Folate

ornornor4 anni fa

Same here. Took me two decades to figure it out.

Hardly ever get them anymore since when it was a weekly occurrence before.

There aren’t many SLS free toothpastes. In Europe I found Elmex and in the Americas Sensodyne (not all, check ingredients)

hgomersall4 anni fa

There's apparently evidence that emulsifiers added to food are problematic regarding mucus membranes, as well as gut biome. We try to avoid foods that contain them as additives as much as possible (and they really are everywhere).

mikewarot4 anni fa

>I wonder about sulfates, specifically SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate

Dawn is my favorite dishwashing liquid of all times, SLS seems to be the first active ingredient[1]. What should I use instead?

[1] https://dawn-dish.com/en-us/how-to/what-dawn-is-made-of-ingr...

goda904 anni fa

I wonder if it's fine if you thoroughly rinse dishes and wear gloves while doing the dishes.

krageon4 anni fa

Are you sick? No? Then what is the issue here?

omniglottal4 anni fa

Are organisms other than the individual in question attempting to survive unscathed where SLS exists in the water which goes down the drain and gutters and ultimately into watersheds? Your inability to recognize the issue upon narrowly imagining an individual human as the only potential victim does not eliminate it's deleterious effect on biomes and, by extension, humanity. Your invalidation is, itself, invalid. I hope this ability to rationalize away real problems by means of intentional ignorance is never applied to a human other than yourself, as others may recognize this as a genuine cognitive sickness. Please do not spread this illness.

[deleted]4 anni fa

stephen_g4 anni fa

The article references another article about SLS in toothpaste (unfortunately not accessible without paying) - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00016357.2019.1...

Just seeing that makes me want to switch toothpaste. There looks to be an 'Oral B Toothpaste Pure' that doesn't have SLS or colourants, might give that a go.

wiml4 anni fa

I stopped getting canker sores some years ago after changing toothpastes. Having read of SLS, I assumed that was the culprit — but no, I read the ingredients and my new "good" toothpaste also has SLS. So whatever the change was, that wasn't it. For all I know it wasn't even the toothpaste at all!

stephen_g4 anni fa

Interesting. Could have also been a concentration thing, if the newer one just had less of it. But yeah, could potentially have been something else completely!

nerdponx4 anni fa

Tom's of Maine has a "Botanically Bright" and "Botanically Fresh" brand that use some other dispersants instead of SLS, although who knows if that's any better: https://www.tomsofmaine.com/our-promise/ingredients/sodium-l...

runnerup4 anni fa

https://sci-hub.ru/https://doi.org/10.1080/00016357.2019.157...

Here's a non-paywalled copy of that same article.

zorgmonkey4 anni fa

Do you happen to know of somewhere in the US that sells that 'Oral B Toothpaste Pure'? Everywhere I can find that sells seems to be in Europe or Australia which I assume would mean paying a stupid amount in shipping fees.

stephen_g4 anni fa

It might have just been an Australian market thing? Unfortunately after I posted, when I went to try and order it from Chemist Warehouse (big chain here) it was out of stock, and lots of other places have it on their sites but out of stock too. So it seems to be discontinued even though Oral B still list it on their Australian site...

I’m trying a SLS-free toothpaste now from a local company (again Australian) called Grant’s, but they only have one with fluoride, which has a bit of an intense flavour. But it’s OK. They do seem to have a US distributor but I don’t know if it’s available anywhere over there. Sensodyne as the other commenter mentioned does have SLS free toothpastes but I wanted to avoid some of the other things in it (not that there’s strong evidence against their use, but one ingredient, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, is just a potential irritant, I wanted to avoid the sweetness, and the EU has stopped allowing titanium dioxide in food).

ornornor4 anni fa

Sensodyne is easy to find in the Americas and has at least one variant without SLS.

version_five4 anni fa

I worked in an office where I eventually realized I got annoying to bad GI problems whenever I drank the water (won't describe in detail but very atypical and I at first wondered why it only happened when I was in the office), and someone else there once mentioned they had the same problem. I always used the office-services provided glasses to drink out of, and reading this it seems very likely it could have been residue on them

heavyset_go4 anni fa

Might also be the result of shitty water treatment or softening, or even the state of the water source, water main and pipes in the building. Some water softening is done via agents like EDTA, which are also used heavily in soaps and detergents.

datavirtue4 anni fa

I have seen five gallon bottled water grow algae. It was from a professional water service to the office.

heavyset_go4 anni fa

Yup. I once found out that I had been drinking water from a source that had mold growing all inside the water fountain's plumbing itself. It explained why I constantly felt like shit, given my mold allergy.

Vrondi4 anni fa

I had issues severe enough to visit a gastroenterologist, which turned out to be caused by a water filter that wasn't being changed. I stopped consuming water going through that filter, and all symptoms went away within a day or two. It was stunning.

emmelaich4 anni fa

I don't touch water from a filter or (if I can avoid it) bottled water.

Tap water in Sydney and most of Australia is excellent.

runnerup4 anni fa

Same where I grew up. The town regularly won awards for far surpassing all the drinking water standards, even the super strict totally voluntary standards they additionally attempted to meet and exceed.

Then I moved to Houston. After talking with some water treatment engineers, I only drink bottled water here. Was very hard to change my habits.

rodface4 anni fa

>Then I moved to Houston

Kindly elaborate! I live here, too.

solarpunk4 anni fa

Y'all just had a boil water notice, no?

aussieshibe4 anni fa

I don't know about the health side, but growing up on South Australian rain and tap water, I think the Sydney tap water tastes absolutely foul by comparison.

noduerme4 anni fa

True story... Years ago, my friend (let's call her "Alice") and I put it together that whenever we went over to "Bob's" house for dinner we both got the runs. Finally, one of us mentioned it to Bob and he immediately blamed his wife: "I've told her," he said, "sometimes she doesn't wash the soap off the plates well enough." Something like that had never occurred to me. Sheer speculation, but it made some sense, as the dinners themselves were fairly basic.

starfallg4 anni fa

We stopped using any toothpaste with Sodium Laureth Sulfate in it and our whole family stopped suffering from mouth ulcers.

There's a lot of commonly used chemicals that are irritants and disrupt how the body works, but are underneath the threshold of toxicity.

hardwaregeek4 anni fa

I’m curious, did you ever try using less detergent? Like cutting one of those pouches in half? It’d be messy but maybe it’d work.

nerdponx4 anni fa

Don't use the damn pouches! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

SV_BubbleTime4 anni fa

A. Watch his follow up video. Where he talks about all he got wrong.

B. I recently switched to a more “natural” SevenGenerations pouch and holy crap it’s been excellent.

C. You can not buy anything but pods at two of my grocery stores. You need to go to Walmart near me to find any straight powder. Market has spoken right or wrong.

nerdponx4 anni fa

> Market has spoken right or wrong.

I call BS on this. The non-pouch detergents disappeared, that much I know. I strongly doubt people had stopped buying gel and powder. I suspect that some bright bulb at Johnson & Johnson or wherever did the math and realized that pouch margins were higher than gel and powder margins.

michael19994 anni fa

The marketing side of the market has spoken.

Fixed serving sizes force over-use. Lots of included water means extra volume and weight (perceived value) on the shelf. While powders allow measured use, and reduce turnover.

I buy 20lb boxes of cheap powder and they last for months. Hot water just doesn’t need that much help if you put some in the pre-wash too.

AdrianB14 anni fa

20 years ago in my country overuse of powder detergents was well known by all the manufacturers; this is when fixed serving sizes were developed as a way to contain the problem and they are also considered more convenient by most consumers. I was working in one of these companies at that time, so I know the subject pretty well.

michael19994 anni fa

I'll grant that the pods are often reasonably sized. My main complaint is that they don't provide any detergent to the pre-wash cycle. That can leave a lot of oil for the main wash to process.

nerdponx4 anni fa

I would have assumed that overuse was a desirable outcome for the manufacturer.

AdrianB14 anni fa

There were a couple of very undesired side-effects that manufacturers hate because it was making the consumers angry:

1. Burning the color of clothes.

2. Irritating the skin (hand-was was very common, it still has some use cases even today).

Also there was a move around 2003-2004 to increase the concentration of automatic washer detergents, that was meant to decrease the transportation cost for manufacturers, but overuse was even riskier. I know it was done, somewhere before 2005 when I left that area of business, part of the solution was a big marketing campaign, another part was switching to liquid detergent with a measuring cup, also including a measuring cup in the package with the larger sizes. I don't know what happened later.

krageon4 anni fa

If you put less detergent in the packs, they are cheaper per package. This is good, because that means the price can stay the same for more profit.

Schroedingersat4 anni fa

> I buy 20lb boxes of cheap powder and they last for months.

...is this a commercial kitchen? 20lb is like two loads a day for a year.

archi424 anni fa

Depends on the household size and habits. Daily cooking for 4 or 5 people and sharing two other meals and the occasional baking can quickly fill up the dish washer, especially in those growing phases when the kids are eating like there is no tomorrow ;-)

kube-system4 anni fa

> The non-pouch detergents disappeared

? I still see them everywhere. And a quick Amazon search for “cascade complete” lists gel as the first result and powder as the third.

nerdponx4 anni fa

The local supermarkets all stock literally one or two boxes on the shelf at a time, even though I know they have more in the back because as soon as I buy one it's put back on the shelf the next day. Something really funny is going on, I wouldn't be surprised if they had some contractual arrangement to artificially limit the amount that appeared in stock, to make it seem less appealing.

inkcapmushroom4 anni fa

As someone who has worked in a grocery store I think you're reading way too much into it. They have priorities when stocking shelves but I think conspiracies by Big Detergent to get you to buy tide pods are low on the list.

kube-system4 anni fa

What's going on is that grocery stores have notoriously horrible pay, and nobody wants to work there.

SV_BubbleTime4 anni fa

Yea, I didn’t list Amazon. I said in the stores near me. Last I checked, Amazon’s thing was to have everything.

XorNot4 anni fa

What he got wrong was... You might want to use less detergent to avoid residues.

The pouches are still pointless.

We switched and it almost completely solved our "dishes not getting cleaned properly" problem.

dhritzkiv4 anni fa

Same.

Switching to powder has done a lot for us in getting dishes cleaner, and we can dial in the amount of powder needed for the particular soil level of a load.

The fact that it's cheaper per load, and the box fits more neatly under the sink are added benefits.

MereInterest4 anni fa

And if your hands are slightly damp, the cardboard box for the powder doesn't stick to your fingers, where a dissolvable membrane would start dissolving on you.

insane_dreamer4 anni fa

We use dissolvable tablets (from Blueland) with all "natural" ingredients; can't vouch for how true the natural claim is, but we're happy with them and it's one way to reduce plastic; we also get their dissolvable tablets for hand soap, all purpose cleaners, glass cleaner, etc.

TylerE4 anni fa

Plenty of things that are “all natural” will kill you in the blink of an eye

hackernewds4 anni fa

Like arsenic

TylerE4 anni fa

Or cyanide, cobra venom, polonium, or lead.

throwawaylinux4 anni fa

Also lions.

tailspin20194 anni fa

I always give my dishes a quick rinse to wash off any excess lions.

aussieshibe4 anni fa

"Wash off any excess lions" without even mentioning to check for alkali metals first.

You're going to kill some poor soul trying to clean all the baked-in francium and lions off their crockery.

Shame on you.

tailspin20194 anni fa

I'll try to do better.

insane_dreamer4 anni fa

You missed the tigers and bears.

garyfirestorm4 anni fa

I tried the dishwasher tablets and felt like it didn’t clean the dishes as well. We been using the hand soap and other cleaners and I’m never going back on those. Maybe I need to give the dishwasher tabs a try again.

insane_dreamer4 anni fa

Maybe it depends on the dishwasher. We used them in our previous house and weren't as impressed with them but then moved and our new dishwasher works very well with them.

darkwater4 anni fa

TIL American dishwashers expect hot water input. This seems... bad?

nerdponx4 anni fa

It's only bad if the hot water takes a long time to get hot, which used to be much more problems than it is in newer systems.

Scoundreller4 anni fa

Or run half in the pre-wash cycle and the other in regular cycle.

Can also help to run/prime your hot water tap before starting cycle to start off with hot water (in places where it’s hooked up to hot).

acjohnson554 anni fa

I also learned this hot water trick.

Apparently, energy efficient dishwashers have an energy budget per cycle and will only put a fixed amount into heating water, so getting hotter water into the dishwasher makes a huge difference in performance.

nijave4 anni fa

The difference with "primed" hot water is pretty crazy for something that seems trivial. I've also found opening the door and jiggling the racks during the drying cycle also makes a pretty big difference (assuming you catch it at the right time--and use heated dry)

michael19994 anni fa

Some vinegar in the dispenser will fix the spots.

dreamcompiler4 anni fa

Or a half teaspoon of citric acid powder.

Red_Leaves_Flyy4 anni fa

Hope you enjoy replacing seals

egberts14 anni fa

Oooh, ouch. Yeah, in an industrial setting (PCB, the printed circuit board, not the oil-based ones found in end-feeder poled step-down transformer).

Citrus acid does "WONDER" in shorten lifespan of rubber/plastic seals.

hjadal4 anni fa

Theres also liquid or powder detergent, which allows you to use a fitting amount for the dishwasher load.

SV_BubbleTime4 anni fa

Liquids have enzymes or bleach. They might have oxiclean instead of bleach but apparently the two best cleaning agents don’t exist in liquid together very well.

Powder is better. Pods are just powder.

amanaplanacanal4 anni fa

But the pods have too much detergent. Since there is no detergent in the pre-wash, they put too much in the main wash.

tharkun__4 anni fa

I always break a corner off the pod and crumble it into the pre-wash partition since watching the video nerdponx in the sibling thread posted (found it through a different post maybe a half year or so ago also here on HN). I also do the hot-water priming when I remember to.

insane_dreamer4 anni fa

You can also get dissolvable tablets (basically powder stuck together).

throwaway20374 anni fa

This post is incredible. How did you get the idea to experiment with your dishwasher? Another question: If you wash dishes by hand, is everything OK?

[deleted]4 anni fa

michaelteter4 anni fa

While 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).

XorNot4 anni fa

A 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.

michaelteter4 anni fa

This 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!

slv774 anni fa

It also makes a delicious yogurt like product. Tastes somewhere between cream cheese and Greek yogurt. (https://www.luvele.com/blogs/recipe-blog/new-improved-l-reut...)

Melatonic4 anni fa

Get some Natto at any local asian market. Bonus if you make it yourself which is pretty easy. There are now also bacillus subtilis supplements out there but the full food is much better.

Schroedingersat4 anni fa

You can put stronger/commercial detergent in the pre-wash dispenser (or just dump it wherever before running) and then a small amount of castile soap + citric acid (or just citric acid) in the main dispenser.

trebor4 anni fa

Ironically, 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.

jasonhansel4 anni fa

Importantly, 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).

JonathonW4 anni fa

Also, they've only tested one professional dishwasher and one household dishwasher using one specific formulation of rinse aid.

There's enough here to indicate a need for further investigation, but not enough data to come to any overall conclusions about commercial or household dishwasher safety in general.

jkepler4 anni fa

They call for further study at the end, acknowledging that their data was all /in vivo/ in a lab, and not direct data in humans. Thus, while they claim to have demonstrated a mechanism, they make no claims that it works the same way in people.

Vrondi4 anni fa

"In vivo" means in a living body. "In vitro" means in the lab/petri dish.

ornornor4 anni fa

> They call for further study at the end

Tangent: most papers seem to do that… which confuses me. It feels like it’s basically saying to discard everything the paper talked about because to be actually sure you’d need to investigate more than they did.

Is it a pro forma formula or does it really mean what I understand it to?

rocqua4 anni fa

Generally, answering questions will raise new ones. It is very unlikely for a single paper to be the end of a line of research. Sometimes the new questions are quite fundamental (like here), sometimes the new questions are details, and sometimes the further research is "try this same method on this other known big problem".

Besides the inherent fractal nature of how science works, there is also an incentive. Being a scientist in a solved field is not very smart. Or even more cynically the 'further work' section says 'please pay me to do these things next'.

But I think the cynical view is not as important here. Research tends to be strictly limited in time, and for good reason. During the research you will probably find new directions, and also get insight into what old questions are interesting, or what new methods matter. All of these are great cause to include a further work section.

hammock4 anni fa

If 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.

joezydeco4 anni fa

One 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...

SoftTalker4 anni fa

The rinse aid prevents beading, actually. Beading is what leaves the spots.

hammock4 anni fa

Yes I had it backwards. It’s the old “add soap to water to break the surface tension” kids science experiment: https://youtu.be/ho0o7H6dXSU

giraffe_lady4 anni fa

Yeah in industry they are often called sanitizers because the purpose and mechanism are fundamentally different from the home ones people are familiar with. Or as a common chef quip: "the dishwasher is the guy running it, the machine is a sanitizer."

They are notoriously bad at removing food residue, which must be sprayed or scraped off before running. Anything more than trace is cooked onto the dishes. They're really good at removing thin layers of grease quickly, and sanitizing. Doesn't surprise me at all that they don't do a final rinse; handling stuff right out of them leaves a distinct feeling on your fingers, like the opposite of bleach kinda. You have more friction than you should until they fully dry, it's very noticeable.

hackernewds4 anni fa

you seem to be in expert on these matters, on an experiential level?

giraffe_lady4 anni fa

Started working as a dishwasher as a teenager, ended up spending a couple decades cooking professionally eventually at a pretty high level. Did something else for a while, then got back into it for another few years before learning to code and ending up here.

Kiboneu4 anni fa

I have sensitive taste buds and worked for an industrial kitchen with a Hobart washer:

1. Rinse plates before putting them in crates

2. Slide the crates into the washing machine.

3. Close the machine to get it to perform a 3-stage cycle over 2 or 3 minutes: soap, sanitizer (usually some ammonium solution like in sanitizing tablets), then rinse.

I was able to taste bitterness after the rinse cycles and we were never in a rush, so I had the habit of re-rinsing the plates afterwards.

In restaurants I notice soap in my water or on the plate every now and then. It seems like most people don’t mind or notice. If you don’t feel the texture change or taste the bitterness of soap, you can see it by observing pearlescent colors on the surface of your drink.

RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm4 anni fa

Rinse 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.

PragmaticPulp4 anni fa

For everyone confused by this comment: In some countries you might find dishwashers with a sort of built-in water softener: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_salt

It's not common in the United States. Some all-in-one detergent packets might contain some amount of dishwasher salt, though.

cvoss4 anni fa

In my limited experience in the several places I've lived in the US, only one had an issue with water that was hard enough to need addressing. Most residences there had a dedicated household water softener, so even there the dishwashers didn't need to do their own softening.

Here's a nice map [1]

[1] https://homewater101.com/articles/hard-water-across-us

nerdponx4 anni fa

Another anecdote from the USA: I've only ever had problems with hard water in a house that got water from a well. Never had a problem with municipal water (although there are other contaminants in that).

someweirdperson4 anni fa

From that link [1 above]: "An overwhelming 85 percent of the USA has hard water, so the likelihood that you live in state or city with hard water is high."

For a random location. Comparing the water hardness map with a population density map it seems that most are living in areas with soft water.

rubidium4 anni fa

Nice to be #1 in something. But that explains a lot.

mauvehaus4 anni fa

I'll give you an upvote for that little dive into Wikipedia. For those who haven't already swum as deep, the article on ion exchange resins[0] is also worthwhile. Turns out they are used for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel as well as softening water. Plus a few other things.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion-exchange_resin

DwnVoteHoneyPot4 anni fa

I did bad in high school chemistry, I never could understand this stuff. First, the ion exchange resin beads are washed with Na+ which bind to the beads. Second, the hard water is run through the beads and bad stuff like Mg2+ has a stronger attraction to the beads than Na+, so the Na+ is pushed off and Mg2+ binds to beads. The resulting water out of tap is softer because Mg2+ is out, but saltier because Na+ is in. Then once in a while the beads are flushed with Na+ again with the Mg2+ being sent down the drain... but how does this happen if Na+ has a weaker bond? How can it push the Mg2+ off the beads??

pfdietz4 anni fa

The concentration matters. Concentrated Na will displace Mg, but in the Na concentration in the tap water Mg will displace Na. If you had a concentrated brine with large amounts of both sodium and magnesium, the Mg would win.

colechristensen4 anni fa

I believe the Mg+ Ca+ have a stronger attraction to the Cl- ions in the salt so when soaked in brine they trade places with the Na+

Beads prefer Mg over Na but Mg prefers Cl over beads. So you can recharge with salt brine.

Or it might just be a concentration thing where Na / Mg ratio wants to be the same in the brine and beads. So you just give a really strong brine and most of the Mg etc leaves the beads.

shellfishgene4 anni fa

As explained, it's the concentration. If you don't have a dishwasher with a water softener: You don't sprinkle a little salt in some compartment, it's large and filled with 1-2 pounds of salt to make a saturated brine. The salt sold for dishwashers is purified NaCl (table salt has some other stuff like anti-caking agent). That's what the dishwasher uses to drive the Ca2 and Mg2 off the resin.

zweifuss4 anni fa

Ca²⁺ is the more important ion, since limescale is mainly calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). Otherwise, the explanation is fine.

The exchange of the ions is driven be the difference in concentration between water and resin surface. It works both ways, but Ca²⁺ is preferred (=stronger bonds) by the binding groups (e.g. carboxylate salts). That's why a concentrated Na⁺-brine is needed to flush out the calcium ions.

heavyset_go4 anni fa

Imagine the bonding as reaching an equilibrium where Mg2+ bonds and then dissociates in a repeating cycle. If you flood that solution with Na+, the chances for Mg2+ to bond after dissociating are lower when an excess of Na+ is doing the same thing, and a new equilibrium is reached.

js24 anni fa

Fisher & Paykel dish drawers have a salt-dispenser, at least my 2004 models do. They are (were?) designed in New Zealand but sold in the U.S. For a while they were sold rebranded by KitchenAid. My water isn't hard though so I haven't had to use any salt.

(Aside, and I don't know if they are still any good, but these dish drawers are really well engineered. Mine had some problems early on that were resolved by small changes in the design, but FP provided me the parts to retrofit my washers. They've been nearly trouble free since then.)

this_steve_j4 anni fa

The H series F&P dishwasher models have a built-in water softener. [0]

According to the user guide, a water softener is recommended if your municipal water hardness is >250ppm which would be quite hard for municipal tap water.

In my region of central Florida the city’s water quality report shows a hardness well below 250ppm, Which you can divide by 17.1 to determine how many grains of salt to take that with.

[0] https://www.fisherpaykel.com/us/dishwashing/all-dishwashers/

julianz4 anni fa

They were bought out by Haier a few years ago, they still exist as a brand in NZ, not sure about elsewhere. Anecdotally not as good as they used to be.

OJFord4 anni fa

Available in the UK too. I don't have experience with the drawers (that's the dream though - fridge/freezer especially, drawers for everything (below waist height) makes so much more sense to me) but I'm familiar with a couple of more recent (last couple of years, definitely post-Haier) appliances that are pretty nice. You pay for it though... Seems roughly like Skoda/VW/Audi in terms of top-end F&P branded units with nicer fit and finish than fairly similar but much cheaper Haier branded ones.

I was looking for a fridge-freezer specifically, considered Haier but went with Liebherr in the end - I like that (in terms of white goods/kitchen appliances) it only makes refrigeration units, other than where you use them there's nothing tying them together in why a manufacturer would be good at making them all really, makes sense to specialise in refrigeration, or dish washing, or gas products or whatever IMO.

throwaway092234 anni fa

"It's not common in the United States."

If US folks are looking for this feature, it can be found on higher end Bosch dishwashers in the US.

I have very hard water and a Bosch benchmark series. The water softener makes a huge difference. I don't want a whole-house softener because I don't enjoy the feel of softened water in the shower.

Vrondi4 anni fa

Everyone I've ever known with water hard enough to be a bother just installs a whole-house water softener, so all the water inside the house is already softened. Seems inefficient to soften only the dishwasher when a whole house system is pretty cheap.

wtetzner4 anni fa

How could it be less efficient to soften less water?

pfdietz4 anni fa

We had a Bosch dishwasher with a built-in water softener when we lived in Lake in the Hills, IL, a suburb of Chicago. The municipal water there (from wells) was extremely hard and it made a big difference.

We now have a Bosch dishwasher in another house in NY state. The water is not hard (it's from one of the Finger Lakes), and the dishwasher does not have a softener, but we like the brand. After reading this story we looked up how to tweak the rinse aid dispenser and turned it down from "5" to "1".

yupis4 anni fa

Why don't you like the softener water? I thought it was better for the skin.

throwaway092234 anni fa

Softened water feels slimy to me - similar to seawater.

I actually do have a whole-house softener which came with my house. I installed a bypass valve so it does not feed the pipes in my home.

D13Fd4 anni fa

It may be over-softening. Our water felt slimy until we replaced our old unit. The new unit uses way less salt (at least 10x less) and the water feels normal.

hedora4 anni fa

I believe the old ones had an adjustment, but I can confirm new units definitely do. We hardly use any salt at all.

b1124 anni fa

It's easier to rinse soap off with hard water.

[deleted]4 anni fa

casion4 anni fa

Fill the salt? Configure for water hardness?

I've never heard of either of these things before. Certainly not things on my, relatively fancy, dishwasher.

RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm4 anni fa

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.

spfzero4 anni fa

Miele has it. It's a reservoir with a twist-cover at the bottom of the dishwasher that you fill with salt whenever the dishwasher tells you its time. Seems to be about once a quarter.

yamtaddle4 anni fa

Ditto, no clue what either of those mean. Never, ever heard of adding salt to a dishwasher, certainly. Not in new ones, not in ones from the bad ol' days when they used way more water but actually worked.

djpr4 anni fa

I have a new one (a few years old) and yes there's a compartment for salt. My previous one did as well. I'm in Europe (Spain) if that helps. I don't go to any special store to buy them, any old Lidl or other supermarket has it. Where you from where this isn't a thing?

yamtaddle4 anni fa

From other comments it's looking like this one of those US/European divide things, with compartments for salt being uncommon on US dishwashers except for a few rare higher-end models/brands that are likely common to both continents (due to low volume in the US not justifying a localized version, I'd guess). I'm middle-aged and in the US and this thread is the first time I've heard of adding salt to a dishwasher.

Macha4 anni fa

Seems to be not quite EU/US. At least in Ireland we don't have salt compartments either. Maybe an anglosphere/not division?

esskay4 anni fa

Really odd that it differs so close to neighbouring countries. Here (UK) I've never seen a Dishwasher without a salt hole, and there's often several well know brands of salt in the supermarket (no idea why, its all the same stuff).

I wonder if its based on average water hardness in the area. I'm in the north of England and our supply comes out of Buxton Springs (yep the same as Buxton bottled water) and is extremly soft so despite filling the salt it never asks for it to be refilled again as its not needed.

When I used to live in north London I'd be filling it up once a month as the water there is extremely hard - so hard that it'll kill your kettle within a year if you don't keep on top of descaling.

wil4214 anni fa

In the US you would install a house water softener that would soften the water when it comes into the house. It would only be used in areas with hard water. Our dishwashers usually use hot water rinses instead of cold water like European style ones, the hot water heaters will soft the water before it gets to the appliance.

Mvandenbergh4 anni fa

Ireland has very hard water for the most part so I don't think that'd be the reason.

cricalix4 anni fa

Anecdotes are not data and all that. The dishwasher in my house is a NEFF, and it has a salt compartment. Came with the house, built-in unit. So yes, some Irish houses have dishwashers with salt - sample size 1.

biorach4 anni fa

> At least in Ireland we don't have salt compartments either

I'm pretty sure the majority of dishwashers sold here have salt compartments - I've never seen one without one.

Much of Ireland has very hard water.

colechristensen4 anni fa

In the US we have whole home water softeners when necessary, in the EU they’re built in to dish washers.

Just small differences in water treatment and quality.

teekert4 anni fa

I’ve never seen a dishwasher without this :)

But I think most people here in the Netherlands never set it up correctly and go for “all in 1” tabs. I never do, always set it up correctly. I do feel I need rinse aid to not have that nasty feel to the glasses.

Vrondi4 anni fa

Apparently in Europe and some other countries they don't do whole house water softeners?

herbst4 anni fa

Interestingly enough as normal as salt containers are in dishwashers as 'uncommon' are house wide water softeners to me.

I know a few people who have a single outlet for osmosis water, I use a optional water filter in the kitchen outlet for drinking water.

But nobody I know is softening their whole water supply. Why soften toilet water? Why soften cleaning water? Garden water?

Well for the last 2 I guess it depends on how hard it really is

saaaaaam4 anni fa

Softening toilet water means there’s less limes SLE build up in the bowl and around the rim which means the toilet is easier to clean.

Softening cleaning water means your clothes come out - well, quite literally softer. And last longer.

quantified4 anni fa

US consumers are easier to sell to, perhaps.

astrange4 anni fa

Except for the various ethnic groups who are very proud of not using their dishwasher at all.

Scoundreller4 anni fa

They use it alright (as a pantry/place to store dishes).

jasonhansel4 anni fa

My dishwasher doesn't have a salt compartment or any sort of water-softening features; in the US, I haven't heard about this feature. Apparently it's a UK thing?

denimnerd424 anni fa

I know Miele has a water softener feature. That's the only time I've heard of it in the US.

pdq4 anni fa

There are a few Bosch models with dishwasher salt dispensers, but it’s extremely rare in the US.

It’s a great idea, given most municipalities have hard water.

swader9994 anni fa

Yeah I need it with my well water. But generally we just put up with spotty dinnerware. If we have guests over, we'll wash whatever by hand before.

denimnerd424 anni fa

interesting.. I got a Kitchenaid but maybe I would have gotten a Bosch. I wanted a Bosch but they were on tremendous backorder compared to the Kitchenaid in 2021.

mauvehaus4 anni fa

Fill the salt? I'm not sure all dishwashers have a receptacle for that. Ours doesn't, and I'm pretty confident that I've never had one that did across several states in the US and one place in Belgium.

Is the salt for doing a softening process that substitutes for a whole house softener if you don't have one?

We live in a place with hard water and have no softener in the house (you should see our electric kettle when we haven't cleaned it recently). Recently the accumulation of what I assume to be mineral film has gotten a bit noticeable on the dishes that go in the dishwasher.

seszett4 anni fa

> and one place in Belgium.

You might not have paid attention to it because your didn't know about it, but I don't think there are any dishwashers in Belgium that don't use salt, at least for the last twenty years or so.

mauvehaus4 anni fa

1) Thanks for the reminder that I'm getting old :-)

2) IIRC, that house had a whole house softener.

cj4 anni fa

My dishwasher has a "salt" light that lights up when the salt is low.

The dishwasher is also 30 years old. Miele G 680 SC from 1992. Living in New York. Perhaps adding salt was more common in older models.

spfzero4 anni fa

I have a new-ish Miele which has it. Good thing too, because we have really hard water here.

jiveturkey4 anni fa

> - always fill the salt.

rinse aid is for hard water. restaurants probably tend to not treat the water and the commercial dishwashers they use probably tend to not have a provision for salt. they operate very differently than your residential dishwasher.

So yes, completely unneeded if you have soft water. Most dishwashers don't have a provision for salt.

Also completely unneeded if you don't mind spots.

literalAardvark4 anni fa

I have hard water and a dishwasher with a softener. The plates are dramatically cleaner if there's salt in the softener, no matter what detergent i use.

xfitm34 anni fa

> 30 years old dishwasher, super hard water.

This is the real key, modern dishwashers have so many limitations in an attempt to reduce water and power usage they do an awful job. I wish there was more information on how to disable these features.

SV_BubbleTime4 anni fa

Clear European give away.

codetrotter4 anni fa

> 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!

I've only come across this in Spain so far. Never seen in Norway. But maybe I just haven't been paying attention. Then again, the water in Norway in :chefskiss:

insane_dreamer4 anni fa

Have never used rinse aid even once.

[deleted]4 anni fa

alpos4 anni fa

The 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.

matthewdgreen4 anni fa

I 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?

theGnuMe4 anni fa

Modern dishwashers use way less water, so you are likely using too much detergent. You can probably cut the amount in half. I actually run an extra sanitize cycle which is like an extra rinse I believe to help remove the extra residue. Older dishwashers in general use a lot more water which helps. Sometimes I run the tough cycle since it uses more water as well.

I use the pods most often but I've found that cascade platinum leaves more noticeable residue then quantum but I may actually switch to something else entirely. The problem is if I use anything besides these two my dishes don't get as clean. The pods are also difficult to chop in half.

I think the manufacturers need to create a low dose high efficiency detergent. There's probably a formula and I bet cascade platinum and the quantum are optimized for an older generation of washers that use more water.

alpos4 anni fa

I agree, caution still seems justified, whenever we find toxic effects of materials we might contact daily it's worth considering whether the risk that this is a real and present threat is worth the benefits of having those things around. Similar story with Teflon, plastic packaging and utensils, clothing detergents, surface cleaners, micro-beads in face products, cosmetics, talcum powder, deodorant, etc.

For this specific case, I'd still rather see the evidence that most dishwashers, when used according to manufacturer operating instructions (or even when used as most people operate them in practice) actually do leave enough dangerous chemical residue on the dishware to be a risk and that significant amounts of this stuff transfers to food before I'd say it's a claim the manufacturers have a burden of defending. Similar claims could be made about ceramics and glazing for instance, and the ceramics would harm us if ingested, but there's no evidence that ceramics from plates transfer to foods as we eat, even if we cut food on the plate with a knife. Of course, ceramics don't tend to dissolve readily in water either so we can presume detergents and rinse aids have some higher chance of transferring to food if present.

Of course the reality is, if enough people take the sensationalist headlines seriously, the manufacturers will have to defend it anyway; but this effect is what makes organization leaders assume most people are too stupid to hear the truth about nearly anything and the root cause of things like bad nutritional advice recycling over and over again.

Many people are still afraid of stuff like MSG, even though it occurs naturally in many foods and has been proven safe over and over again. The root cause of that scare was a science article in the New England Journal of Medicine back in 1968 which was sensationalized by the New York Times. Bad memes like "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" are prevalent enough throughout the history of scientific literature to merit an equal portion of caution before reacting to any single paper with too little skepticism or too much drive to change our lifestyles or behaviors.

matthewdgreen4 anni fa

I think the gist of your response is that you think the standard should be “first prove it’s retained on dishes” before you remove a known harmful ingredient. I will reiterate that I disagree with this: the well-funded industry deploying the toxic ingredient should be responsible for proving that the toxic ingredient is washed clean. I feel this way for three reasons: (1) the industry chose the ingredient and thus should bear the burden of proving it’s safe, (2) the industry has more resources, (3) if this ingredient does prove dangerous, industry might select a new ingredient that is equally dangerous (and hence see point 1.) I don’t feel like your post provided me with much of a reason to change my opinion on this.

As far as MSG goes I’m not sure what that has to do with this issue. Clearly it would have been better if MSG had been well-studied early on, before concerns about it spread widely. This seems like an argument for investing in studies early. But even aside from that: this is not MSG. It’s a toxic ingredient that may or may not evaporate.

alpos4 anni fa

Btw, MSG is found naturally in a bunch of stuff, like the seaweed used in various parts of Chinese and Japanese cuisine. So it's not something a well funded industry invented like artificial sweeteners. (for which it seems no amount of study can stop the bad memes)

Much like yogurt, it's made by fermentation. Much like table salt, it was discovered to be delicious by people putting just about everything in their mouths back in the day. It can be said that MSG was in the process of being well-studied early on when the sensationalized news fouled up the whole process and made people unnecessarily afraid of something no more harmful than table salt.

Decades and tens to hundreds of papers later, the sensationalized story is still winning in the minds of people who don't understand how science works and don't know where most of the stuff around them comes from. This is the problem with overreacting to a headline. You might be doing yourself a favor health wise, possibly, but you might also be demanding millions of restaurants redesign their menus to feed you less healthy, less delicious food, for no good reason.

The problem is, you don't know. That's why it's okay to take a single paper with a grain of salt.

alpos4 anni fa

I think what you are asking for is generally the status quo actually. Industry does not generally choose ingredients so casually without any study at all. And regulators generally require prospective studies on possible harmful effects to people and environments before new compounds can be introduced to products people use all the time. That is most of what the FDA and EPA are up to.

The problem is, people can be wrong. Scientists have bias too. Sometimes people see trends in data not because it's valid but because that's what they were consciously or sub-consciously hoping to find. Even on review of the work by industry and regulatory panels, people still make mistakes. Products still sometimes have effects no one knew about or intended. On top of that, everything is lethal in sufficient quantities. Even water will kill you through electrolyte depletion if you drink enough a once.

My point is just that science is hard, studies are deliberately narrow and careful to try and add one tiny little fact to the pile of all human knowledge. And even then, most early findings turn out to be wrong in various ways or get refined in a way that makes excited reactions later seem overblown. It takes a long time to prove anything like the broad statements we tend to find in sensationalized news coverage. So while caution is fine, immediately assuming that one small study just recently published, yet to be replicated successfully, using a methodology that leaves a huge number of variables open to question between the lab environment and the real world use cases, is just not something to get too excited about.

Maybe the companies that work on rinse aids will want to follow up this line of research and answer some of those questions...but let's be honest, if you're already assuming the product is harmful based sensationalized news, are any follow up papers funded by the interested parties really going to change your mind? Are you even going to look for those papers six months to a year after you toss out your rise aid and demand your favorite restaurants do the same?

If you want to find the studies you would like industry to be doing, I'm sure they are available. Most of the scientific studies out there have something to do with testing products that exist or finding new things to make into new products.

It's just that most studies of anything at all are not terribly sensational. Like, how boring a headline is "dish soap company finds new detergent compound that binds to grease 2% better than the most commonly used compound, no immediately obvious side-effects, more study needed for FDA approval"?

e404 anni fa

To add to this. When I take dishes out of my dishwasher and rinse them manually, sometimes they feel slippery until I rinse the residue off them. I always wondered what that was. I think the detergent I use with my Miele (also made by them) includes a finishing agent, not sure. I will check and perhaps try something else for a while.

Mistletoe4 anni fa

This 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...

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.

twic4 anni fa

The 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.

modeless4 anni fa

My 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.

tsol4 anni fa

>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.

Yes, I believe there are studies that have found households that use detergents to wash their dishes have significantly high rates of allergies than households that only hand wash dishes. After hearing that, I started trying to try to avoid using detergent when possible. I think it makes a lot of sense-- really the majority of the powerful chemical detergents we use in the home are mostly unnecessary. They're just bound to leave residue that enters our bodies

incongruity4 anni fa

So, pragmatically, we can’t not use our dishwasher - time is just not available given some other constraints. Given that, do you have any suggestions from your reading about less harmful detergent replacements?

massaman_yams4 anni fa

Another comment suggested an extra rinse cycle.

robmsmt4 anni fa

can you explain more on the gas stoves and oven part?

modeless4 anni fa

Children 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=...

moloch-hai4 anni fa

Gas stoves exhaust right into the house. Besides raising the CO2 level, they produce CO, carbon monoxide, and smoke from whatever impurities come with the gas, that vary according to where it comes from. I doubt anybody bothers to get the radon out. That would cost money.

Propane is probably purer than straight-up NG, but it's exhaust is still exhaust.

kragen4 anni fa

radon decays into dust in a couple of days, but natural gas deposits are tens of millions of years old and have been out of touch with potential radon-generating rocks for weeks or months by the time they reach your stove burner

getting radon out does not cost money

moloch-hai4 anni fa

In a week or three, anyway. Anywhere somebody has bothered to liquify the NG, the radon will have decayed before it gets vaporized again. Where pipelines lead straight to gas wells, the dwell time in the pipeline before it is burnt could be quite short. But there might be negligible radon even at the wellhead, as it would need to be picked up from surrounding rock on the way out, unlike e.g. helium which accumulates.

Probably other toxins are more important: mercury vapor and hydrogen sulfide are usually mentioned. Hydrocarbons other than methane may burn to carbon monoxide or soot. Gas is said to get much less processing before delivery than it used to.

SpaceX will probably purify theirs before pumping it aboard, just to increase the useful life of their Raptor engines.

kragen4 anni fa

good points

hammock4 anni fa

>Gas stoves exhaust right into the house

Best case you have a hood that vents to the outside. Hoods really work

moloch-hai4 anni fa

Restaurants commonly have such hoods. I don't know of any private homes that do, though I don't doubt a few exist.

unethical_ban4 anni fa

My home as a kid did. I don't know why it's fallen out of favor, since I can't imagine it costing more than $100 or so in parts and labor on a build... If we can have a bathroom vent, why not a cooking vent?

If the vent moves more than a certain amount of CFM air, then an exchange system is required, but that takes almost a restaurant grade vent to get to.

hammock4 anni fa

Most homeowners don’t think about it. If your range is located on an exterior wall it’s easy. Ought to be more common

MauranKilom4 anni fa

They put a really high amount of particulates in the air, drastically reducing air quality.

avsteele4 anni fa

The 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...

Which links to:

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.

hedora4 anni fa

When we lived in houses with gas, some difficult to remove yellow residue formed on the outsides of all our stainless steel. We assumed it was cooking oil, but apparently, it was not. Our induction range completely eliminated that problem.

I wonder how much of the gunk is still in my lungs.

Melatonic4 anni fa

The real kicker is that most gas stoves leak. That residue might not have even been from USING the stove - it could have been from a very slow leak constantly coming out of the stove.

I took apart mine and completely greased all the fittings and put the proper type of teflon tape. Feel way better. Confirmed there are zero leaks now

djmips4 anni fa

Nice!

DoreenMichele4 anni fa

decreased transepithelial electrical resistance

If you look it up, gut epithelial barrier basically means the mucosal lining.

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-...

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

mikeiz4044 anni fa

EPA 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-t...

causi4 anni fa

We 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?

forgotmypw174 anni fa

As 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.

causi4 anni fa

It 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.

forgotmypw174 anni fa

I'm not sure if there is any difference?

causi4 anni fa

The difference seems to be that rinse-aids cause health problems and regular detergent doesn't.

3170704 anni fa

I 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?

djmips4 anni fa

I'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.

forgotmypw174 anni fa

With 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.

acadapter4 anni fa

I'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.

modeless4 anni fa

That'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.

hilbert424 anni fa

It 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.

samtho4 anni fa

Modern 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.

throwaway2904 anni fa

5 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.

samtho4 anni fa

Running 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.

pja4 anni fa

A 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.

samtho4 anni fa

My data was from memory as of >10 years ago from when I worked in construction, I am very happy to hear it is likely even less than I originally thought.

hindsightbias4 anni fa

I 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.

bonniemuffin4 anni fa

How is a microwave related to this article/discussion?

hindsightbias4 anni fa

What 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.

clnq4 anni fa

> What happens when you microwave a detergent covered bowl?

So... what happens?

jayd164 anni fa

Some plastics are not food safe when heated and leach chemicals. Probably related to the concern the GP has.

clnq4 anni fa

This 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.

Melatonic4 anni fa

Or just use your microwave to reheat normal food you have cooked yourself in glass containers. Not a lot to go wrong there.

djmips4 anni fa

Clean and well rinsed glass containers.

zamalek4 anni fa

The plastics industry dodged the issue/controversy by eliminating BPA. While BPA is by far the worst endocrine disruptor, it is extremely likely that all the plastics that you are currently "safely" using contain endocrine disruptors.

You should be avoiding storing consumables in plastics as much as possible. At that point microwaves become perfectly safe.

balls1874 anni fa

I generally don’t eat burritos wrapped in plastic.

867-53094 anni fa

generally people are not you

johndoughy4 anni fa

> 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.

esaym4 anni fa

Ok, 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....

jkepler4 anni fa

Use Guinness - it does a great job rinsing the mouth and throat after any meal. After all, Guinness---its not just a breakfast drink.

michael19994 anni fa

Plain 5% vinegar will be fine. It will smell funny if you open the door during the dry cycle. But it is safe, non-toxic, and will prevent mineral spots, and help rinse starch.

RetpolineDrama4 anni fa

Install a whole home water filter so you're not washing your dishes in crap water anyways. I don't use rinse aids at all and my dishes come out spotless.

NateEag4 anni fa

Tossing in a bit of vinegar with each load has worked well for us. We have incredibly hard water.

hedora4 anni fa

We have a whole home water softener. Rinse aid does nothing for us. (Similar principle as using vinegar)

insane_dreamer4 anni fa

You don't need any rinse aid, period.

esaym4 anni fa

Did 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.

djmips4 anni fa

Maybe get a dishwasher with salt dispenser as mentioned elsewhere in the comments.

https://www.southernliving.com/home/organization/dishwasher-...

surfpel4 anni fa

> citric acid

Citric acid [1]

1 - https://www.thespruce.com/homemade-dishwasher-rinse-aid-1388...

insane_dreamer4 anni fa

Then the problem is the dishwasher or the lack of a water softener. I've never used rinse aid and we do not have spotty dishes.

tsol4 anni fa

It 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.

amanaplanacanal4 anni fa

Either you are using too much detergent, or you have very hard water. A water softener would probably fix it.

Melatonic4 anni fa

Deep clean your dishwasher along with all filters and whatnot

29athrowaway4 anni fa

A reason behind mysterious endless baby crying is often soap residues left on milk bottles. Always rinse a bottle again before using it.

balls1874 anni fa

Man, that’s wild.

I always sanitized my baby’s bottles, either via boiling water or via sanitizing steam bag.

Wolfenstein98k4 anni fa

Citation 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.

29athrowaway4 anni fa

Germs or hot plastic?

blockwriter4 anni fa

It’s endocrine awareness day on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33816861)

jasonhansel4 anni fa

I don't think the OP proposes an endocrine-related mechanism for this damage.

wobbly_bush4 anni fa

Is my reading of the summary correct that it is only (or mainly?) talking about rinse aid and not about the detergent?

hammock4 anni fa

Rinse 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).

pfdietz4 anni fa

It's not sulfates, it's ethoxylated alcohols.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation

hammock4 anni fa

It's both, and they work the same way on the gut

pfdietz4 anni fa

That 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.

Melatonic4 anni fa

Interestingly enough there was ANOTHER study where they looked at safety of plastic bottles. And then they discovered that plastic bottles absorbed WAY more detergent in the dishwasher than glass or metal and whatnot. This was not even the original intention of their study.

So basically do not dishwash plastic stuff.

kragen4 anni fa

many surfactants are not sulfates

many sulfates are not surfactants

none of the numerous meanings in 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

hammock4 anni fa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation#Alcohol_ethoxysul...

kragen4 anni fa

while it is nice that you have cleared up what you meant by 'aes' (a third category which excludes not only most sulfates and most surfactants but even the most common surfactant that is also a sulfate, sds) you have not answered my question

why are you posting this egregious misinformation here

ars4 anni fa

Yah, 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.

matthewdgreen4 anni fa

It 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.

jandrese4 anni fa

If 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.

kwhitefoot4 anni fa

Many 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_lady4 anni fa

How... 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.

SoftTalker4 anni fa

GP 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_lady4 anni fa

Oh you're right, I misread it. Thanks.

SoftTalker4 anni fa

Yep. 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.

hedora4 anni fa

I 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.)

SoftTalker4 anni fa

I think that is for the final rinse. It's probably hot enough to sanitize but doubt that the dishes would be really clean without using detergent.

ars4 anni fa

Commercial dishwashers don't wash the dishes with soap, rather they blast them with water, and then sanitize with bleach.

Home dishwashers attempt to remove food residue with enzymes (also no soap).

ars4 anni fa

> 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.

Bud4 anni fa

Indeed, the study seems to conclude that it's not rinsed off completely and residue remains on the "clean" dishes.

quercusa4 anni fa

If I remember chem class correctly, -nol indicates an alcohol (ethanol, methanol...)

jkepler4 anni fa

Yes, 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.

kibibu4 anni fa

I think you mean in vitro. There are no animal trials at all.

htoiwuerweoir234 anni fa

Why 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.

potamic4 anni fa

There 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.

hanafudafan4 anni fa

Nobody 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.

pcthrowaway4 anni fa

> torture-filled cows

I think other animals are used just as much (if not more) in industrial processes, I assure you there's no conspiracy to specifically oppress cows.

awinter-py4 anni fa

wonder 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

AtomicOrbital4 anni fa

I wash dishes by hand with hot water and a Korean abrasive cloth using no soap ... It's quicker and easier than anything else

leobg4 anni fa

Have a link to the Korean abrasive cloth you recommend? Would like to try it.

AtomicOrbital4 anni fa

google this ... Crown Choice Heavy Duty Dish Scrubbers for Cleaning Dishes & Pots ... its a slightly abrasive cloth

neurostimulant4 anni fa

How 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.

lm284694 anni fa

You'll be fine, bacterias are everywhere, you literally have poop particles on your toothbrush and everything else in your bathroom, you'll be fine

neurostimulant4 anni fa

I 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.

lm284694 anni fa

Fair enough, in non risky areas people tend to be too OCD about these things

djmips4 anni fa

What if they are greasy?

b200004 anni fa

So 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.

Karawebnetwork4 anni fa

There 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.

lazide4 anni fa

As anyone who has worked the back of a kitchen can attest, there are almost no actually trustworthy restaurants.

b1124 anni fa

I'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?

xeromal4 anni fa

One of the dirtiest, worst people I know is a sous chef at Flemings. Take that for what you will.

gadflyinyoureye4 anni fa

Oh I bet that is a frying pan fire thing. The cups are probably endocrine disrupters too with a plastic lining.

hammock4 anni fa

Hot beverage cups are coated with polyethylene which is one of the most inert polymers you can get. You could do much worse.

kzrdude4 anni fa

You get paper mugs at some coffee shops. And at many you can ask to use your own reusable cup.

leobg4 anni fa

And those paper cups are covered with what? PFOA?

hammock4 anni fa

What are you getting from a coffee shop that has been through a dishwasher? The mug?

asdff4 anni fa

Certain pieces of equipment are cleaned at the end of the night, so even if you bring your own mug you don't remove the possibility of leftover soap or sanitation solution residue.

hedora4 anni fa

Sanitizer is different than the stuff the article discusses:

https://fivestarchemicals.com/star-san-sanitizer-32-oz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodophor

tomjakubowski4 anni fa

Some shops will give you a discount if you bring your own mug. Ask your barista!

sramsay4 anni fa

The real news here is that there is such a thing as a "gut-on-a-chip."

[deleted]4 anni fa

doitLP4 anni fa

It’s time to place all chemicals in the “unsafe until proven safe” category.

npongratz4 anni fa

I don't mean to be trite, but that won't work since everything is chemicals.

maxerickson4 anni fa

You also can't prove anything safe.

balls1874 anni fa

Good old di-hydrogen monoxide. A horribly toxic chemical.

hedora4 anni fa

It 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

sgerenser4 anni fa

Surely you mean if you inhale it?

balls1874 anni fa

If you inhale yes, but drinking it can also lead to certain death.

reverius424 anni fa

Not drinking it can also lead to certain death.

A_non_e-moose4 anni fa

Nazis and pedophiles were also avid consumers of that chemical.

etienne_oq4 anni fa

For 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!

1MachineElf4 anni fa

Here's an interesting video by Technology Connections on how most dishwasher "pods" are overkill: 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.

Balgair4 anni fa

Seems 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.

hokkos4 anni fa

I use white vinegar instead of a dedicated rinse aids.

GuB-424 anni fa

It 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).

peatmoss4 anni fa

In 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.

kleton4 anni fa

Solid 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

pja4 anni fa

> Sulphonic Acids

This is probably some kind of detergent, although there are lots of different sulphonic acids.

moistly4 anni fa

Those 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.

jliptzin4 anni fa

What the hell is rinse aid anyway

hammock4 anni fa

It’s just surfactants. Aka detergent. That doesn’t get rinsed off, it gets “rinsed on.” It’s function is to make water bead off the glass so that water spots are not left

derbOac4 anni fa

Dishes also dry off faster as water beads off more.

jandrese4 anni fa

Residential 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.

jasonhansel4 anni fa

It'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.

xxpor4 anni fa

It 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.

lotsofpulp4 anni fa

How would dishes dry then? Is there at least a fan providing air flow?

xxpor4 anni fa

This 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.

balls1874 anni fa

Dishwashers do have a dry cycle, but I just open the dishwasher and let them air dry overnight.

ironmagma4 anni fa

Useless liquid you put in your modern dishwasher which doesn't perform a proper drying to save energy.

surfpel4 anni fa

I'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.

raverbashing4 anni fa

I 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

[deleted]4 anni fa

michael19994 anni fa

Vinegar 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.

LarsDu884 anni fa

I always rinse my dishes before using them, even if they've been in the dishwasher. Does anyone else do this?

Wolfenstein98k4 anni fa

Post-cleaning, pre-use? Yeah that's very rare, never heard of it.

djmips4 anni fa

Always

Konohamaru4 anni fa

What is the solution? (Don't have the focus to read, understand, and analyze the scientific paper atm.)

ketralnis4 anni fa

The trouble isn't the solution so much as the precipitate

kibibu4 anni fa

For 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

anon2914 anni fa

Realistically, rinse aid is hardly necessary.

spiznnx4 anni fa

don't use rinse aid, or use an "eco" one that doesn't contain Ethoxylated Alcohols

blackhaz4 anni fa

How to recognize an alcohol ethoxylate?

hammock4 anni fa

Anything that ends in “sulfate” on the ingredients label. Or anything that is labeled “detergent” or “rinse aid.”

pfdietz4 anni fa

How 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

hammock4 anni fa

EA 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.jp...

fire4 anni fa

huh, I didn't know home and commercial rinse aids were any different?

skrbjc4 anni fa

Based 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.

fire4 anni fa

holy hell; do they really need it to be that concentrated?

iLoveOncall4 anni fa

Wait, people were serious when they said we shouldn't eat Tide Pods?

boomchinolo784 anni fa

Oh wait....cue gluten-allergy

merth4 anni fa

I think I have gluten-sensitivity(cant confirm). I rarely eat out. always order delivery, use plastic fork. I dont have a dish washer.

boomchinolo784 anni fa

It'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.

CHRIS_LUCAS4 anni fa

aaron6954 anni fa

seydor4 anni fa

maybe dont wash them that often

WillPostForFood4 anni fa

You 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.

seydor4 anni fa

The Healthy Gut Epithelium Restaurant*.

*you might die of other causes, though

b1124 anni fa

Hey wtf, you told me that the dishwasher didn't get all the dirt off, but it was OK, the heat sterilized it! Damnit Bob!

spfzero4 anni fa

Where there's a surprise on every plate.

wutheringh4 anni fa

I know a guy who washed his dishes, and he died

merth4 anni fa

I know a guy, who has 20 pans and all dirty, washes no 19 to cook his 2$ stake. what a legand.

zgin46794 anni fa

You'd think the stakes couldn't get any higher!

merth4 anni fa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hETgbsF5yY8

zgin46794 anni fa

I knew Bill, too. Good man, clean dishes. RIP, Bill.

PainfullyNormal4 anni fa

True story!

miffy9004 anni fa

If you're talking about "don't full-on wash them in the dishwasher on the 1 hour wash cycle every time you see a breadcrumb drop on the plate and just rinse in warm soapy water and towel dry" then yeah.

jasonhansel4 anni fa

You just need to buy the special "no-wash" dishes.

jkepler4 anni fa

Or eat straight from the pan/bag/fridge/dumpster, whatever.

damsellaci4 anni fa

When 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.