Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids(sciencedirect.com) |
Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids(sciencedirect.com) |
So I get to pick between PFAS soaked throwaway single use cardboard cups or epithelial barrier damaging glass/ceramic ware.
Of course you can, just pack a lunch. If your trip is longer than a day, then stop at grocery stores instead of restaurants. It's easy to avoid restaurants, so the failure to replicate this finding with residential dishwashers is good news. How could it be "even worse"?
the same can be said about the enormous amounts of salt they put in food ... how do you insure people wash their hands when cooking? eating out is an exercise in trust.
this should be the top comment
So, in their example, the results in consumer dishwashers fell in the 1:40,000 - 1:80,000 dilution range. But, that does not necessarily apply to a different brand of dishwasher with a different method of rinsing. A 10% savings in the rinse cycle water might move that ratio into the 1:20,000 - 1:40,000 range (which is within the range of having an significant effect). So, I interpret this as not dismissing of consumer dishwashers, but rather indicating more careful study is needed.
I might be more careful now
Upscale restaurants will generally do a better job here with temperature control and regular inspections.
Having a food handlers card as a chef is generally required but not for expo or servers and questionable for line chefs outside of higher end establishments.
Bottom line, unless you’re at a Michelin or Beard restaurant you should expect you’re being exposed to more harmful stuff than you’d expect.
I always thought the reason was the handling of the hot, sprayed tableware. It set on pretty quickly too : couple of months.
To clarify a bit, it's not professional dishwashers (the machines) but the soap / chemicals used for commercial dishwashing. Minor but important when thinking about the broader problem.
Mind you, it gets diluted but those end up in the water supply, as does many other knows and unknowns. For me, the question has not be what effect does Compound X or Compound Y have individually, but when in the wild what happens when you combine A to Z+? Then what?
That alone was reason for me to avoid them, since decades. And this hasn't changed. And I have no 'super-nose'(I think).
That stuff is nasty.
It seems to have the alcohol ethoxylates mentioned in this paper:
https://www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners/2994-FinishJetDryRinseAg...
I expect it is also in the finish dishwasher detergent pods.
digging deeper the wikipedia article on ethoxylation says:
Ethoxylated fatty alcohols are often converted to the corresponding organosulfates, which can be easily deprotonated to give anionic surfactants such as sodium laureth sulfate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation
I had trouble with SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate) and switched to toothpaste, shampoo and laundry detergents without this.
This chemical has gotten a bad rap and a lot of formulas were changed to use sodium laureth sulfate mentioned above. (I avoided that too)
I'll bet they are all trouble.
I got a new Miele unit a few months ago and the manual specifically advises the use of such a solution, with caution not to make it any stronger.
It’s been working like a charm.
1 year ago, 411 comments : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33822149
Got triggered by epithelial.
From the summary it seems that they only investigated the dose dependent toxicity.
I interpreted it as "leftovers of a significant amount" not a "significant amount of leftovers", meaning that it was used in high quantities, but only remnants (in non significant amounts) were found.
What you're looking for is "Alcohol ethoxylates". Avoid these.
11 months ago. Direct copy of linked study.
I stopped using extra shine mode on my Bosch dishwasher to save a little rinse aid. Noticed no difference. Vinegar ruined the seals and had to replace it.
https://www.spektrum.de/news/klarspueler-gefahr-fuer-die-dar...
Overall, this sounds like the danger is rather low.
How naive was I to think it's both cleaning well and not leaving dangerous chemicals as residue to mix onto a water or beer.
Instead, more and more tests should be necessary for the more people you want to sell your product to, and the more people use it.
Some toy you sell 1000 of to people at a craft fayre should require a simple declaration that you didn't knowingly use leaded paint, while something you sell 10 billion of (eg dishwasher tablets) should require a whole independent team of scientists to do every study they can think of the establish risk/benefit.
I also have no experience with dishwashers, so how different is dishwater detergent from regular dishwashing soap?
I use a brand of dishwasher tabs that are supposed to be more “natural” and never use rinse aid, to no ill effect. Personally I think the normal tablets and rinse aid are specifically designed to be used together.
It also seems to be the water used about 4 liters of water in commercial dishwashers vs 12 liters for household types. Commercial use less water, more powerful detergent, no water rinse.
Dishwasher detergent is a surfactant, but is not a soap. All soaps are detergents, not all detergents are soaps. Soaps form insoluble precipitates when used with "hard" water, dishwasher detergents don't do that. They're not good to touch directly (rather harsh on the skin, they'll remove all the oil) but since they don't form those precipitates they work in a wider variety of conditions than soaps do. They also tend to include some other components, like bleach. That helps them clean better without needing mechanical scrubbing, which dishwashers don't do.
>An exciting finding of the present study is that alcohol ethoxylates that are responsible for these toxic effects can be extracted from recently washed dishware and still kept the toxicity.
Scientists.
In the analytical chem lab, you can get an idea how suitable pyrexware is for future use by mathematically considering the quality of the final rinse water, the effective dilution ratio, and the number of times rinsed.
I might start skipping the rinse aid and I'll seek out dishwasher pods that don't have that ingredient.
But apparently it's more od an issue with "professional" (restaurant) dishwashers, which use less water and more chemicals. I gathered this from other comments and I don't know if it's true.
I also looked at home-made detergent recipes, as we've had good luck making our laundry detergent, but the blog I looked at showed severe streaking and residue on their example dishwasher load. I can't say that appeals to me, either.
tldr; they did science
The study looked at concentrations found in "professional" (restaurant) doses of the chemicals.
I'm not sure how much it applies to residential dishwashers. I did find that ingredient in my rinse aid and dishwasher pods.
Turns out cells don’t like it.
Who’d a thunk it?
Not a huge deal, just worth noting
But in the end, I think the cost savings of citric vs vinegar vs rinse aid is negligible. Usage should be about 5mL per wash (matches my experience), and even if you use fancy rinse aid, it is still a small fraction of the costs of running a dishwasher.
Note that the article is concerned about professional dishwashers, they didn't reproduce their findings on household dishwashers. Professional dishwashers are very different from household dishwashers, and they use much higher concentration of detergent and rinse aid.
https://www.test.de/Klarspueler-im-Test-Jeder-dritte-hinterl...
I noticed the eczema returned as soon as I did wet cleaning in the house, so I converted to a staunch cleaning gloves wearer.
they have dishwasher, they put cups in dishwasher, they run, they serve in clean cups.
it's clear from the article that this is an issue across the entire food service industry, and has nothing to do with whether or not your pimply faced barista knows what the safe level of rinse aid in pre-made clears is.
In the best-run high-turnover locations where cleaning agents are used according to a rigorous schedule proven to prevent slime and bacteria, it might be even more likely to have exposure if the chemicals are habitually incompletely rinsed from the apparatus afterward.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Automatic-Dishwasher-...
Kroger gel and powder doesn't seem to have it.
https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-lemon-scent-dishwasher-deter...
https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-lemon-scent-dishwasher-deter...
Frankly the harmful ingredients seem to be exclusive to pacs and pods.
Side note, those numbers are entirely arbitrary to illustrate the point, not meant to be indicative in anyway of how much is actually left in the processes above.
I didn't claim that, but I think it was a combination of the temperature and the (rinse) spray. One could feel the spray.
Yes, I know it's not ideal for towels because the wax inhibits some absorption, but I couldn't stand it so I just went back to using dryer sheets.
Soon I'll be getting a good quality dryer with a steam sanitize mode, maybe that will help.
The reason food safety regulations exist and are much stricter than what you need to apply at home is partly because it affects people at scale, and partly because individuals have no control of it.
So exactly because dining out can be unsafe, food safety should be strictly regulated ("guaranteed").
It seems that the disagreement is mostly how many expectations someone can put into a "guarantee".
> We've accomplished an pretty astonishing modicum of safety and thereby trust in food service.
I completely agree. But I also want to add that it's an unstable equilibrium:
Some years apart you get some scandal where someone kept meat mostly frozen for 30 years.
If that bothers you, you just have to remember the old adage: “if you want something done right, diy.”
Almost every time I've actually gotten sick from food has been eating out. I've also seen some close calls like when my fiancee was served 'rare' pork... Which isn't a culinary thing.
The scare of pork is the risk of trichinella. To such such a degree that some speculate that is why Muslims have codified it as haram.
Trichinella is practically non-existant in domestic pigs in EU due to regulation/industry.
In the US you should take more care. You should however remember that cooking food safely is not a magic temperature but a function of temperature and time. The threshold for pork is then 63C because mostly everything unwanted is dead at that temperature.
But if you keep it at a lower temperature but for a longer time you will have the same effect. An easy way to do this is using "sous vide". Simply put a water bath at a constant temperature. This has the advantage that if you vacuum your meat it can go into the water straight from the freezer without defrosting first. I usually add one hour to the sous vide time to allow for defrosting time.
So I usually sous vide pork chops (from the neck) at 54C for some hours and then pan sear to finish the crust. With quality pork I honestly find this superior to a regular bovine steak!
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinella https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety
On the other hand, like you, essentially every food poisoning I've had was dining out. Suburbs with lax food safety enforcement, city with some of the most rigorous inspection regimes in the country, wherever.
Once my wife & I both got food poisoning ordering completely different food, as though the entire food station was contaminated.
It's not hard at all if you're cooking chicken. All it can take is reusing the cutting board without washing.
If you're careful about it, it's hard. But plenty of people aren't careful. They think the risk is "overblown", they assume salmonella in chicken is as rare as salmonella in eggs.
This makes it pretty easy. And then they think they caught a stomach flu or something.
Who separates meats in their fridge and on their cutting boards, dates the opening times of items, etc? Similarly, a home dishwasher doesn't actually sterilize anything, which is why its safer AFA chemicals. It's just providing the hope that small doses of something you've already interacted with won't cause sickness.
But once you've been sick from some contamination you won't really notice it, but guests might. Some restaurants run the same way as typical homes, and will be universally contaminated and someone who eats out regularly with variety is going to have similar consequences to being a guest in houses all over town..
Don't let the Germans know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett
https://www.seriouseats.com/case-for-raw-rare-pink-pork-food...
Food safety is a matter of both temperature and time (https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-s...), and we’ve all but eradicated trichinosis in commercially available pork.
Like a big pot of soup, some fried meat and whatever side dish like cooked cabbage. The idea is to spend the unpleasant cooking time once, put it all in the fridge then for a few days at least the whole effort is just to retrieve servings and heat them before eating.
Most of the times I finish what I cooked before starting to spoil but even spoiling isn't very sudden. Like I ate 5 days old soup yesterday and tasted a little funny but it was all good, no side effects. There's still a bowl left at the bottom of the pot today and by the time I'm hungry it's too late to start thinking and waiting for alternatives so what the heck. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger I guess. Therefore it happens sometimes that I wakeup at 2 AM with an acute feeling that a bowel evacuation is imminent if you know what I mean :)
Also, it helps a lot to have strict sanitary standards for yourself, like always using a clean, fresh utensil to scoop out your servings. Or if you use the same one, start from the most-recently cooked food and end at the oldest, so you're not potentially introducing bacteria or mold from older stuff into newer stuff.
I eat leftovers sometimes up to maybe 10 days at max, but I am pretty good at avoiding any issues from it.
Nevertheless, for good results it must be done at a low power (I use 440 W in a 1000 W oven) and a long time, e.g. 20 to 25 minutes for chicken, about 30 minutes for turkey and more for pork/beef. For organs, e.g. livers, hearts, gizzards, a somewhat shorter time is enough.
When done for the first time, experiments are needed to determine the optimal power and time, which depend on the type of oven and on the amount and kind of meat. Once determined, the results will always be the same and the meat is very tasty, because it loses nothing, except a part of the water content (roasted meat has typically 2/3 of the weight of raw meat, due to water loss).
The meat should be microwave-roasted after removing the bones, and preferably after being cut in bite-sized pieces, which will avoid too violent steam expulsions if the power level is set too high.
Plus he was twelve, definitely in the age range where such errors are the expected product of experimentation in an unfamiliar world.
Somebody microwaved a whole brisket, and it was surprisingly good.
Where I live, the former is far more trustworthy, with home dining only winning on price and ingredient choice - not safety.
You just have to cool it first so you don't overload the freezer with too much energy at once. We cool the pot, then divide and refrigerate the smaller containers overnight before transferring to the freezer the next morning.
We put our whole soup pot into a cold water bath to rapidly cool it. When the water warms appreciably, drain and replace with cold water again. Sometimes we put ice or those sealed gel ice packs into the bath to really accelerate the process.
Just suggesting a basic level of hygiene.
Just saying that it's not hard to do. That's all.
Dating opening times is going too far IMO: if it's open, and longer then 7 days in the fridge you toss it. Which is to say, if you can't remember when you opened it, that's also a good sign not to eat it.
It's not like any of this is hard to do.
Although this:
> a home dishwasher doesn't actually sterilize anything,
is not really a statement on anything. "Sterilize" is a very specific term which means you did a process which is guaranteed to kill extant micro-organisms and viruses. But the reason hand-washing is so effective at preventing disease is that it doesn't necessarily kill them, but soap will wash them off surfaces very effectively. They're still alive, but they're in the sewer. Commercial dish washers aren't designed to sterilize either - they're designed to get things clean as fast as conceivably possible (i.e. single digit minutes, not hours).
The converse of this is the problem with old rice: reheating rice is periless, because while it will kill the bacterial contamination, the toxins remain and that's what will make you feel sick if you eat it.
If I don't want to get sick, I store stuff reasonably, sniff before cooking, and don't hold things past date/days open.
A restaurant wanting to make money is incentivized against being "better safe than sorry" on throwing away stuff rather than serving it. They care more about complying with the letter of the law with respect to passing health inspections well enough. If they occasionally get someone sick, its not always probable that the customer attributes it back to them, and still.. may return anyway.
For the "you get food poisoning at home all the time and don't know it / its just like flu" crowd.. I'd argue you maybe have not had the most severe, rapid onset forms that you can get from a restaurant.
People who have had botulism know that isn't real food poisoning..
I hope you don't strictly follow that rule or you'll throw away loads of absolutely edible stuff. Pickles, ketchup, mustard, jams, ... Yoghurt is often still fine after a week. My thing of miso has been open for months.
Anything you'd normally consider to need to be refrigerated though starts from the "when did you open it" sort of consideration though - meat and vegetables both have about a 1 week timer on them in my experience (though you'll usually know by smell in advance). But "smells okay" isn't a chance I'm going to take unless I'm in a survival situation - and you need to buy groceries weekly anyway.
What helps a ton is having a cheap chest freezer though - they're much more efficient on power, and you can store a ton of stuff in there for ages and just defrost as you go.
What do you consider to be sterilization? Even my old dishwasher, which was made in 2002, has a sani-rinse option that adds a 10 minute rinse with 160℉ (71℃) water which the manual says satisfies the NSF Protocol P153 for sanitizing in household spray-type dishwashers. Unfortunately I can't find a free copy of NSF Protocol P153 to see what that actually accomplishes.
Looking at a few dishwashers that I'd consider to replace mine when it eventually breaks--and I'm a cheapskate so that basically means what I can find at Home Depot or Lowes or Best Buy in the $500-800 range rather--it looks like sanitizing or high temperature cycles are still common, although nowadays what they are saying they meet is "NSF/ANSI 184: Residential Dishwashers" [1].
That requires a minimum 5-log (99.999%) reduction of bacteria and a final rinse temperature of at least 150℉. The 5-log bacteria reduction is only required if you run the sanitizing cycle.
For commercial dishwashers the required reduction in bacteria is the same, although they are required to reach at least 165℉ rinse if they are stationary rack single-temp dishwashers or 180℉ otherwise. For commercial dishwashers the 5-log reduction is required on the regular cycles.
[1] https://www.nsf.org/consumer-resources/articles/dishwasher-c...
Don’t let me start with a stories from a friend who worked as an interim manager at Burger King. It’s scary! But even worse are smaller industrial kitchens without strong control from state and franchise representatives.
Not to mention that the rate of failure of restaurants implies the probability that any given restaurant is in some amount of financial strain and maybe pushing the limits on ingredient freshness & cleaning standards...
Isn't bacteria growth exponential (up until you reach the maximum number that your environment can support)? And don't they often have insane doubling times (something like 20 minutes for salmonella and e. coli)?
Given that I'd wonder if cleaning every 3 months actually makes much difference, except for maybe a couple days right after you clean. Past that any that were missed in the cleaning will have repopulated back to whatever levels they were before the cleaning.
Such values are AFAIK under ideal conditions, usually meaning on a wet surface or submerged in a watery/damp environment at a mild temperature, with sufficient nutrients .. not really how most people store things like chopping boards or other kitchen equipment.
What does that mean to you? That it will happen to an individual multiple times a year? That it will occur in a large city a few times a year?
The risk is hugely overblown in my opinion.
Home dishes don't need to be sterile, they just need food and grease removed.
There are 48 million cases for 350 million Americans a year. Experts say most involve factors at home, I.e. improperly stored leftovers involve both systems, but are attributable to the at home fault..
> The risk is hugely overblown in my opinion
Sure, only about 3000 Americans die a year of food poisoning and most of them will have had other contributing health factors..
I simply reject this idea that a person who thinks food safety is easy is doing food safety really well.
Restaurants have additional complications and risks of not knowing the health of their guests, etc, and having a high volume of food and therefore bacteria passing through. The average home cook scaling up their behaviors would be much more dangerous and doesn't recognize the indicators of mistakes that would kill one of those unlucky 3000 as a house guest.
I think that is a high estimate of incidence and mortality, but even taken at face value, I still wouldnt call that common. we are talking about a once every 5 year event, or if we apply a pareto (20%/80%) assumption, once every 25 years for a normal healthy person.
For a normal healthy person, I think getting some diarrhea once every 25 (or 5) years isn't a big deal. This tracks with my anecdotal evidence, where most adults can recall having food poisoning one or two times. This, based on my risk tolerance, doesnt even rank on my list of concerns.
Yes, having a dishwasher program that thoroughly rinses at 90 °C for 10 minutes will kill most germs in there.
I think this leaves out a very important aspect: how you use your dishwasher has a big impact.
I claim that programs at significantly lower maximum temperatures (say 50 °C) can be safely used as long as people are careful about (a) the state of the items they put in their dishwasher and (b) how they position the items.
If you put in items with lots of and/or big food scraps on them you increase the risk of some of the material being left in some sieve or getting caught in the tray. All material that's left for the final rinse will populate the water with some particles which then cover all items.
Same with dried crusts that only get soaked but not removed by the program.
And also the same with items that are inapropriately positioned, so that food residues aren't reached by the water jets, or so they topple over and fill with water which then also spoils the final rinse.
I'd bet if you reliably prevent the above mentioned things from happening by being careful about which items you put in and how you position them, you can use a low temperature program without any risk at all.
And everyone who owns that model uses that option every time? For the industry washers there's probably less options to bypass sanitation.
It's merely statistical matters that make it less relevant how often people insufficiently sanitize at home. If some are actually immuno compromised and kill themselves that's still nothing like single Burger joint to a public health policy.
(I seem to have triggered the HN "everyone has my current OCDs and doesn't behave like my college roommates" on this thread.)
I don't understand why the idea that an average person gives themselves food poisoning often is rocket science here.
I think most people simply haven't looked into food safety material enough to integrate a probability that they had a food related factor when they feel sick and therefore conclude that they have no food risks in their daily habits that would equate to a small risk of a major health incident in a centralized kitchen, etc.