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Well, it's a bold hypothesis that a household washing machine should sterilise clothes. It's a machine to reduce the load of microorganisms to a manageable level and to remove dirt, fat, and odours. I don't get how the authors arrive at their hypothesis. Before washing machines, people washed clothes with their hands. Cooking them in a pot was only viable with very robust fabrics made from cotton/hemp/flax. I seriously doubt that the microbial load would have been lower before the invention of washing machines. And with older washing machines, using those nasty aggressive washing agents: Maybe, but your clothes would not last that long (there's this difference between old US-style washing machines that just stir and don't heat and EU washing machines that have a drum that turns and always heat the water).

And then, "potential pathogens" in the biofilm in the machine. Ah, well. My skin and mouth are also full of potential pathogens. I don't know what this study is trying to show. Washing machines are not sterile, I guess.

> I don't know what this study is trying to show.

That hospitals should clean their employee's uniforms to prevent the spread of antibacteria resistant strains in a hospital setting, in the UK and elsewhere.

Hospitals in the US already use specialized washing machines that use much higher heat levels under OSHA and FDA guidelines. There are also special procedures for what gets washed with what and when.

This is new to me. I've never heard about healthcare employees bearing this responsibility anywhere within the EU. Who does this study cater to?

In the US, it’s typical for hospitals to provide and launder scrubs used in sterile environments (especially surgical scrubs). However, scrubs are worn in many non-sterile environments too - and it’s often the employee’s responsibility to launder those scrubs. Sometimes, it’s also the employee’s responsibility to purchase non-sterile scrubs.

IMO, this isn’t as crazy as it may sound. It’s reasonable to expect healthcare workers to be professionally dressed (so no gym shorts and tee shirts). It’s also reasonable to want their clothing to be as washable as possible (no neckties, no infrequently-washed blazers or sweaters, fabrics made for harsher detergents and hotter wash water, etc.). Scrubs fit the bill and they’re an improvement over the business casual attire that preceded them.

So why not make everyone use hospital-owned, hospital-laundered scrubs? Because employees don’t like them. Hospital scrubs are usually baggy, scratchy, inconsistently sized, and just plain ugly. I’m a man, but the fit problems seemed especially bad for women. For many people, it’s not pleasant to spend every work day uncomfortable, dissatisfied with their appearance, and with their pants about to fall off.

The methods in the article aren’t super convincing, though the conclusion (wash everyone’s scrubs in a commercial facility) has some intrinsic appeal. Accelerating the rate at which hospital bacteria acquire resistance to detergents is certainly bad - it’s already quite hard to adequately clean healthcare facilities.

As the second half of my post says, healthcare workers in the UK (and elsewhere). To quote the study's second sentence: " In the UK, domestic laundering machines (DLMs) are commonly used to clean healthcare worker uniforms, raising concerns about their effectiveness in microbial decontamination and role in AMR development"

I thought they did that everywhere.

>your clothes would not last that long

Washing on cold or warm, gentle cycle, and then either tumble drying on low or hang drying will greatly extend the life of your clothes. Washing on hot with a more vigorous cycle and then drying on hot not only risks shrinkage in the short term but will cause your clothes to wear out and fall apart much faster.

In Europe most people don't use cloth dryiers. You just hang the clothes on lines (usually on your balcony or in your bathroom if you live in a flat, or in your backyard if you live in a detached home). Clothes are dry the next day anyway, what's the rush?

I wonder if the UV from sun vs the longer time to dry results in less bacteria overall.

Solar UV helps a little, but UVC (180-280 nm) is necessary to thoroughly kill many bacteria and viruses (including COVID) and UVC doesn't reach the Earth because the atmosphere absorbs it.

UVB kills covid, and sunlight is a pretty good disinfectant in general.

https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/222/2/214/5841129?login...

https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/study-reveals-ultravio...

I think the idea that sunlight doesn't breakdown the virus comes from people trying to "cure" cases of covid-19 with sunshine, which yeah, that's not going ot work.

UVB does work but it takes longer than UVC. So long that if you try to use it to disinfect skin, it's likely to give you sunburn before it kills much of the virus.

https://www.nationalacademies.org/based-on-science/covid-19-...

Contrast Far-UVC (200-235 nm), which kills the virus quickly and yet does not seem to cause skin or corneal damage, despite being more energetic than UVB.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-UVC

Not to mention UV will break down the fabric itself.

> In Europe most people don't use cloth dryers

As a European, to the extent that this is true, it's only because they don't know what they're missing.

German here, happy owner of a heat punp drier. To me it's the same as a dishwasher. Something you don't think you'd need until you have it.

And once little people enter the equation, having a drier is a God's end. Modern driers are also gentler on the clothes than the hot air jets of yore.

As a European who currently lives in the US, washes and line dries his clothes, I don’t think mainlanders are missing much. It IS convenient but I’d rather extend the clothes lifespan.

I (American) kind of learned accidentally how much longer clothes last air drying, from drying work clothes and some of my child's clothes, and then expanding from there.

I kind of grew up with line drying, and then stopped, and then started again.

It is pretty remarkable how much longer clothes last with line drying. I only machine dry heavy items that take awhile to dry and/or benefit from it specifically in terms of fluffing up or wrinkling.

I'm tempted to get a heat pump dryer but I'm worried about the size of the ones that are available near me.

I'd expect a longer time spent "damp" probably increases bacterial growth.

This is how it was in the US too growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, everyone had a clothes line in their yard. But by the late 1980s it seemed everyone started getting clothes dryers.

Depends on where you lived. In rural areas, or in older city apartments, yes perhaps. My parents house was built in a subdivision in the 1960s and had an electric clothes dryer on day one.

Clotheslines were not the norm in the 1970s US in my experience. Dryers, like dishwashers, took longer to be broadly adopted than other major appliances but they were hardly uncommon in the 1970s or even earlier.

My mom still hangs clothes on clothesline. I used to hate it when she would hang towels on the line because they would get hard. I also grew up wearing cloth diapers. We grew up poor.

I live in the US and during warm weather hang my laundry outside on a clothesline to dry. I live in a suburb and so have a backyard for this. Living in an apartment would make this unfeasible. The area I live in has quite a lot of cool or rainy days so that does limit it to about 1/3 of the year.

Hang drying increases household dust. Clothes dryers' mechanical motion is great at removing lint from clothes as an unintended consequence.

And it also makes them wonderfully soft <3 And smooth so they don't have to be ironed. I hate the power it takes but it's worth it over hang drying IMO.

> In Europe most people don't use cloth dryiers. You just hang the clothes on lines (usually on your balcony or in your bathroom if you live in a flat, or in your backyard if you live in a detached home). Clothes are dry the next day anyway, what's the rush?

Lived in the Czech Republic for two years and got to experience this. The result: my underwear felt like sandpaper compared to when I dried it with an actual dryer.

I use a clothesline in good weather. If it's a particularly calm day without a breeze to sort of fluff the clothes up a bit, then after they're dry, I'll toss them in the dryer on an air (non-heated) cycle for a few minutes, which takes care of it.

Yeah this is why line drying kinda sucks. Worse in the winter when you have dry skin and your stiff jeans are sanding your legs down. The solution is to tumble them in a dryer for 10 min on no heat or low to soften them up. If you dont have a dryer you can shake/tumble them by hand wrapped up in a bed sheet, laundry bag or basket. I did that a few times but it's laborious.

What is the difference between your air dried underwear and sandpaper? Sandpaper has one smooth side.

Wait what? Who in the EU has the time to hang clothes out? That is like a 15x time difference between a dryer and hanging clothes out on a line.

Not in the EU, but I hang dry about 1/3 of my laundry because it's stuff I don't want in the drier. Wife's bras, cycling kit, wool, dress shirts (less wrinkly when hung vs machine dried). That said, it's just the two of us, when the kid was at home, I damn near needed a commercial drier to keep up with all the stinky sports stuff and whatnot.

I do that, just hang it inside though

I do use a clothes rack inside for some things like merino wool that dry easily and are relatively delicate.

You plan by doing laundry ahead of time. When you have a washer and dryer you get spoiled with ~2hr wash and dry times allowing you to wash needed clothes on the day you need them. If you didn't have that luxury then you would plan ahead. I lived without a dryer for a few years and did exactly that, wash the day before and hang dry.

Sure, I still plan abead of time, but it still takes more time. I don’t dry all of my washing in the dryer, the delicates are hung. But I do have better things to do than spend hours on laundry weekly.

> But I do have better things to do than spend hours on laundry weekly.

You dont have to sit and watch the laundry dry, it does that on its own ;-) Cheekiness aside, it adds maybe 10-15 minutes for hanging up but not hours unless you have to hike to some mountain top or whatever. You still have to fold so it adds little to that when taking them down from the line.

15 minutes per wash is an hour, minute of transfering between one cylinder to the other one is 15x less. Multiply this by 4 washes, and we’ve spent an hour instead of 4 minutes.

I've learned to stop and appreciate the little mind numbing things in life: Walk to local stores, shops, markets, restaurants, Washing dishes by hand, cleaning up house routine, doing laundry. I've got patience. Lets me stop and think about stuff. Or hell, put tunes on the bluetooth speaker.

Anyway, best thing I ever had was a Mabler horizontal washer/dryer allinone unit in an old basement studio. It was small as hell and could handle everything but my winter quilt. Used cold water to condense the moisture and was closed loop. Would periodically discharge warm water into sink via long hose. I think it was designed for RVs and plugged into a 120v socket.

Its not labor time. You put them out in the afternoon they are ready the next day, most seasons. If sun can see them might be a couple of hours, hang inside out so colours don't fade. Also quicker to iron.

People like you and the GP, who generalize across a huge continent/trade block with a wide variety of climates, living arrangements and wealth.

People like us do what?

I hang dry my shirts right inside my closet, but humidity isn’t a concern as it’s low in the winter and controlled by A/C in the summer. It takes less time to hang dry since I don’t need to put the shirts in the dryer and then take them out and hang them up.

All other clothing is washed cold and tumble dried on low, towels and bedding is washed and dried on hot.

> don't get how the authors arrive at their hypothesis

They didn't. The “health care workers who wash their uniforms at home" did.

> Well, it's a bold hypothesis that a household washing machine should sterilise clothes.

That's on the manufacturers for adding "sanitize" cycles: https://cdn.avbportal.com/magento-media/GrandBlog/mhw8630hc%...

> The request could not be satisfied. The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country.

I'm kind of ok with that functionality and advertisement. I'm more concerned with people who think that non-sterile clothing will get you sick (even though you're sitting in non-sterile clothing now).

"I seriously doubt that the microbial load would have been lower before the invention of washing machines. And with older washing machines, using those nasty aggressive washing agents:…"

Nasty aggressive washing agents have a pretty devastating effect on bacteria, molds etc. especially bleaching percarbonates and such used for whiteners/stain removers. Surely then it's just a matter of increasing the amount of washing powder to achieve the desired sanitation level.

A rule I use is that if soap suds aren't still present in reasonable quantity on top of water until the end of the wash cycle then there's not enough soap powder being used.

Perhaps the trend towards minimizing the amount of cleaning agents used in washing has gone too far.

Similarly, perhaps also we've gone too far by removing phosphorus (in the form of trisodium phosphate—aka TSP, etc.) from washing powders, which has been a trend in recent years through environmental concerns. TSP, Na₃PO₄, is remarkably good at removing heavily ingrained dirt. It's also highly alkaline and hostile to living organisms.

That said, surprisingly TSP is not very toxic to humans—at least in small amounts. It's used as an acidity regulator/preservative in food, it's E339.

I always do my stuff at 90C (bedding, towels) or 60C (clothes), both should be pretty sterilised, right?

Everything I have is cotton which is very resistant to such high temps.

Modern clothes, washed in modern machines with modern detergent, don't seem to last long at all.

That's more a quality issue though, I think. The fabric itself seems weak.

I wear my clothes for a day and then wash them, they last about 100 washing cycles before they fray and or discolour too much. That's not bad IMO. All good quality cotton though. I only wear cotton, except underwear and socks.

> it's a bold hypothesis that a household washing machine should sterilise clothes

No such hypothesis was made.

> there's this difference between old US-style washing machines that just stir and don't heat and EU washing machines that have a drum that turns and always heat the water

This is one reason this study seems rather dubious. In fact all the machines (they provide a table with model numbers, one of which is not correct, i.e., “00” should be “DD”) are European front loaders, but what is more concerning is that a far as I could see, there seems to be no mention of whether or how the clothes were dried.

The problem I could see with European style/model front loaders is that they usually and often proudly use little water, water which could rinse pathogens that were released from fabric by soaps, rather than allowing them to effectively reattach to fabric, but that is just my theory, yet a valid consideration altogether.

Then there is the fact that three of the washer models are masher/dryer combos, which are not only notoriously bad at both functions but their performance and designs may have an impact on results too.

Another huge hole in this research is that there is no clear mention of the brand of detergent used, only the type, biological vs non-biological (presumably only one of each). From other common testing, we very well know that different detergents perform very differently, especially across the types of stains, let alone between machines, not to mention types of machines. So we must conclude, assuming all other things being fine, this research would only even be relevant in the UK.

But then there’s also the matter of whether the detergent, the amount of detergent, and even the washing machines are representative of those used not only in the UK, but by hospital staff at all. Nothing indicates that there was some questioning, let alone observation of staff on their usage, equipment, or practices.

Frankly, this research, even if it were only relevant to the UK is still full of huge holes, even some not mentioned that I won’t bother going into detail about.

It is the kind of research that grates me because it is such sophistry, has the appearance of science and the confidence in its conclusions, but in the details it just kind of falls apart as rather purely executed, assuming the best.

I wouldn’t even be surprised if someone did some digging and found conflicts of interest, even just indirect ones that the researchers are not even aware of. Backroom research, research for the purpose of driving a commercial agenda is far more common than people think. I know this for a fact because I’ve witnessed it in person many times, from the smallest levels mostly for personal “publishing” interests, to the highest multi-billion dollar expenditures that are basically little more than very elaborate, very orchestrated, very high level get rich con jobs.

Others have said this more sarcastically, but the article is aimed at hospital workers who are exposed to dangerous pathogens at work on a regular basis, not the average person.

For almost 100% of the history of washing textiles, sterilization was never even remotely a goal. In most cases, sterilization is undesirable and would likely contribute to the growing proportion of autoimmune deficiencies.

Do you also sterilize your kitchenware? Well, given the population bias of HN, probably some of you do, but the vast majority of humankind do not. If you don't sterilize things you put into your mouth, I don't see why you'd expect this for clothes.

So it is amazingly unsurprising that consumer washing machines don't sterilize clothes. Just as you need to take extra care to sterilize kitchenware when you're doing anything fermenty, hospitals shouldn't have been relying on home washing machines.

> it is amazingly unsurprising that consumer washing machines don't sterilize clothes

The article is about “health care workers who wash their uniforms at home.”

Hospitals, for the most part, are not sterile. Some parts of them are, like operating rooms, but the vast majority of the space is not and is not expected to be.

They make laundry sanitizer you can add to the fabric softener cup, it's just unscented Lysol. There's a big difference between clean, sanitized, disinfected, and sterilized. If you're working with plain soap and detergents, it's only going to come out clean. Anything beyond that requires a lot more heat and more chemicals.

Dishwashers get _quite_ hot for a long period of time, and there's relatively harsh chemicals in there too. Does anything realistically survive that anyway?

Pressure canning exists because botulism bacteria or spores can survive boiling temperatures, so you use pressure to get the food up to something like 240F for 30-120 minutes (depending on the food) to kill them. So I'd guess the answer is yes, though that doesn't account for any chemicals.

Technically correct but I really hope people are not encountering botulism on a daily basis.

It was a few years ago, but potatoes baked in foil were the leading cause of food-borne botulism that year. I can't find a ranked list for a recent year, but it's still a recurring cause.

really? I dont cook them that often in foil. I have never encountered it. Will keep it in mind

It's not the cooking, it's leaving them tightly wrapped in the foil (anaerobic) and not refrigerated; and then not reheating them hot enough to destroy the toxin. The toxin is destroyed at less than 100C, but not the bug.

I usually wash them off, poke them, lather in butter, wrap in foil then cook on the grill. Never been sick

Especially on clean, dry dishes (botulism is anaerobic, and needs moisture).

Sometimes a red/pink film will start to grow in my dishwasher especially under the filter grate. I use a dishwasher sanitizer to kill it.

Probably also a sign you're using too much detergent.

Some pathogens also survive hard radiation in space.

Even desinfection does not kill everything.

https://xkcd.com/1161/

Also no need to, bacteri and virus are a normal thing. The problem is, if too many of the wrong type get in your system. So reducing them in general (and also normal washing machines do that) is mostly sufficient.

(And dishwashers indeed kill microscopic life with heat and chemicals, but that is a side effect of cleaning)

Almost any decent modern dishwasher sterilizes kitchenware as an option.

Likewise for washing machines. If you read the paper you will see they only tested 6 machines and chose 60C as a theshold for some reason. Every machine I've used with a sterilize function uses ~76C water.

I sanitize my dishes by getting the things pathogens eat off. Then they sit in the cupboard overnight which is plenty of time for pathogens to die.

resteraunts that reuse dishes several times need a better plan but not my house.

Restaurants have to run their industrial dishwashers at really high temperatures (180F), low temp (120F) w/ chemical sanitization, or the three sink setup for manual washing with chemicals and varying temps.

Doesn't washing your dishes with soap and water sterilize them? Certainly stainless steel silverware, right?

If that was the case, surgical instruments would be sterilized with soap and water instead of in an autoclave.

My dishwasher gets to 159°F as measured by my Thermoworks DishTemp, so yes.

Are people perplexed by the prevalence of bacteria in residential washing machines? That’s what the smell is when clothes are left wet for too long or the door is left open, preventing drying.

Though I wonder what effect a standard load with bleach would have when used in a load or if that’s simply what the article refers to as their disinfectant test.

I guess a lot of people don't leave the door open so the machine can dry between loads. None of my washing machines have had issue with smell but I also run a 90 degree boil wash once a month to clean things out.

It's almost as though people forget these are machines that require maintenance and cleaning.

My Maytag Neptune retains so much water from the previous load, that leaving it open is absolutely ineffective. It molds after 3-4 days no matter what. I can spin the drum after leaving it open for 2 weeks, and it still makes a pronounced sloshing noise, there's still a ton of water left in there.

I suspect this was meant to reduce the fill water used in the subsequent load, but that's only sensible if you're doing laundry every day or two. If you go longer between washing sessions, it's just making clothes stinky. Perhaps it's backwash from water left in the discharge hose after the pump shuts off?

So for years, I just run the first cycle empty, hot, with a bunch of bleach. It wastes more water than this stupid measure could ever possibly save, but it keeps my clothes from being stinky.

That machine was just damaged in a flood so I'm shopping for a replacement as I write this, and I cannot for the life of me find this information in any reviews. Does it drain fully? How much water is left behind?

A friend pointed out that some machines have a little pigtail hose out the back with a manual drain valve on it, presumably meant to completely empty the machine before transport. Their theory is that I could put a solenoid valve on this and install my own tiny pump to finish draining the machine after a session, possibly a peristaltic pump which wouldn't be susceptible to backflow from the lift. But again, I can't find information in the reviews about whether any given new machine I might buy, has this little drain pigtail.

When I first switched to the front load washer I started getting a terrible smell pretty quickly.

How I got rid of it.

1) do not use liquid detergents. powder only. My working theory is the medium used to make it gooey was sticking and giving the mold a good medium to live in.

2) do not use liquid fabric softeners. see #1. I use a fabric sheet on drying.

3) clean cycle once a month

4) washer tablet in with the wash clean cycle, I alternate with bleach every other month.

5) leave the door open between washes

6) drain out the water from the 'pigtail' once every 6 months, or whatever the documentation recommends. It is not just for when you move it. It is meant for the next step.

7) clean out the lint trap. Many have this just before the drain out and before the pump. That thing can get really gunked up. especially with liquid detergents/softners. I use the same schedule as the drain out.

#1 and #2 were the main sources for me. Took about 2-3 weeks before the smell was gone.

For my samsung I would say about a 1/4 gallon is left in the hoses.

Oooo, #1 is fascinating. I've always used liquid and never considered this. I always run with the extra rinse enabled and no softener, so the fabrics come out clean enough that they don't smear optics. I really don't think anything's left behind, but it's an interesting theory.

7: I'm 99% sure none of my washers have ever had an integrated lint trap. I ziptie a mesh-sock trap onto the drain hose so it doesn't clog the washtub drain, and the amount of stuff it accumulates means that any machine-internal lint trap would've been clogged solid in the first few months. There's no mention of one in the manual, either.

I wonder if I didn't drain it upward into a washtub, but downward into a floor drain, if that would eliminate the water-left-in-hoses problem...

It is not much of a 'trap' it is basically a plastic filter just before the drain out. Think it mostly is to keep big stuff out of the sump. But bits of cloth and hair can get stuck on it. You also probably do not want to totally drain it all the time. The sump as someone else pointed out needs to stay wet.

On mine it is a circular item that you can twist out. If I do it before draining water comes dumping out of that. So I drain then clean that thing. Bit of hot water and a bit of scrubbing.

Powder detergent leaves residue also, because it doesn't ever fully dissolve.

I think washers may leave a bit of water in the "sump" so that the pump doesn't run dry. Running dry is typically not good for pumps. Shouldn't need to be a lot though.

I'm lucky enough in terms of layout that I can leave the door wide open AND the detergent drawer open when it's not in use. That allows a kind of "fresh air circulation" between the drawer and the door. That ventilates the whole system. I don't get any smells. I use powder detergent, no cleaning cycles except the occasional wash at 90 Celsius. This is a UK machine though, US may be different.

A note on liquid versus powder detergents. In the UK, at least, my understanding is that liquid detergents do not contain bleaching agents, whereas powders do. That is, unless you buy a colour-safe powder.

If you're pouring bleach into your machine, it can erode the rubber seals. I use Dettol instead (I think it's called Lysol in the States), which seems to do the job.

A bit of bleach once and awhile is ok. There is even a spot for it to be put in on the detergent tray. I do not use it all the time. I stick to the powder and a cup or so of bleach every now and then on a clean cycle (once or twice a year). Pretty sure it is a color safe powder I am using.

> 2) do not use liquid fabric softeners. see #1. I use a fabric sheet on drying.

Have you tried vinegar in the wash and wool dryer balls? I pre-wash with vinegar and add an extra rinse cycle. It's way better than fabric sheets and the balls also speed up the drying process.

Vinegar is also good for dissolving lime, which builds up in the washer when you have "hard" water and will make it stink - not a mold stink, though, more some kind of bacteria that loves to live in lime. In this case it has nothing to do with residual water.

And vinegar is a pretty good cleaning agent all by itself.

I could but my wife has an intense hatred anything with vinegar in it. It makes her gag.

Me too. Luckily the smell doesn't persist.

> I can spin the drum after leaving it open for 2 weeks, and it still makes a pronounced sloshing noise, there's still a ton of water left in there.

Is it a top loader? If so double check to make sure you are really hearing left over washing water and not balancing water.

Most top loaders have a sealed hollow ring around the drum, usually near the top but sometimes at the bottom, that is partly filled with water or a saline solution. The liquid in the ring redistributes itself around the drum during spin cycles in a way that counters an off balance load in the drum which reduces vibration and noise.

If you spin the drum by hand the balancing liquid sloshes around and it can be quite noticeable on some washers. Next time you are at an appliance dealer try spinning the drums in some of the top loaders on display. It can sound like a surprisingly large amount of water.

It's a front loader.

> there's still a ton of water left in there.

Sounds like is not draining properly, is it clogged up? Should use some vinegar on an empty cycle to descale the heater and all the drain holes.

I too am very annoyed by the "save water" trend in appliances that then produce inferior results. Yes, I know there are parts of the world where this is a concern, but I'm in the great lakes region on a well that produces 20GPM of water and I do not have this concern. Water for me is copious and basically free and when I'm done with it it goes into my septic to reabsorb into the water table.

We switched from a front loading washer back to a top-loading one hoping we'd get results similar to the top-loading washers from our youth. But nope. Funky smells, poor distribution of detergent, clothes that don't fully clean.

> We switched from a front loading washer back to a top-loading one hoping we'd get results similar to the top-loading washers from our youth. But nope.

As sibling comment says, get yourself a Speed Queen, made with commercial parts and still washes the good old fashioned way [0].

0: https://speedqueen.com/speed-queen-difference/#classic-clean

Doesn't look available in Canada, and I wouldn't buy from an American company now anyways.

You want a Speed Queen. It’s the closest you can get to an older washer.

We had bad smell with just drying all reachable areas and leaving open the door, cleaning everything that is easy disassembled (tubes, water outlet area of the pump) from tine to time.

2 months ago we discovered the boil wash. With some detergent containing bleach it stopped the smell, even if we leave the machine closed during the day.

I our case it's not we have forgotten but never discovered this function.

Very few washers in the USA have a heat/boil cycle. Hot tap water is the hottest you get.

i think this is partly because in the USA, washing machines run on 120VAC. Heating the water would draw a lot of current.

A lot now have various cycles that are hotter, but I'm not sure how hot.

My current washer (Samsung) has: deep steam, allergen, and sanitize.

It depends on the climate, and I think the smell you are talking about is more likely mold or mildew. In the tropics I found anything left wet for more than an hour needed to be rewashed, as it was already smelling. In colder and drier climates it is much more forgiving (but we still leave lids and doors open to allow the machine to properly dry).

From a skim it looks like the highest setting tested was 60°C which can kill, but wouldn't be considered sufficient in all cases for food safety for example.

My own washing machine is nothing special (front-loader Euromaid, whatever was cheap ~10 years ago) and you can manually bump to temperature up to 70/80/90°C for a cycle (which adds some time). I haven't measured it though to see how accurate it is and I'd imagine 90°C at least isn't great for those rubbery painted patterns or general clothing integrity either.

I started using the higher temperatures occasionally since I have some old t-shirts, but I always have to stop wearing them since the underarms develop a crust - I guess it's some kind of bio-reaction between me, my bacteria ride hitchers, and deodorant. Higher temps do seem to delay this build-up (which seems impossible to clean off), but does seem to reduce the life expectancy of the clothing. When I see people (mostly women) still wearing shirts they got in high school, it makes me a little envious. Mine got that issue in < 5 years before changing the wash temps :(

Headline caveat: specifically for medical staff. I didn't realize they have to wash their own work clothes, I always assumed that was done by a professional company using high temperatures and specialized products, if it was even washed to begin with instead of incinerated. The more you know.

60C held for 15+ minutes should be enough for sterilization. The research paper says they washed at 60C but that the quick cycle was especially poor at sterilization. Other than that I didn’t read the paper closer to see if it was a temperature control problem or not enough time at 60C or something else.

It depends on what you're trying to do. Some bacteria and viruses will survive 60 degrees. There's a reason running a very hot wash (>60C) can quickly get rid of weird smells inside of a washing machine occasionally.

Extra annoying: enabling eco mode (the one that is tested when generating the power usage stats on the sticker for these machines) on some machines will make it run "60 degree equivalent", which usually means "longer but at a lower temperature", which obviously doesn't work for sterilization at all.

Of course, this is rarely an issue for consumers who don't need to sterilize their clothes (except when a family member is sick with some specific illness maybe?). But, for hospital workers, which this paper is about, that's a different story.

> means "longer but at a lower temperature", which obviously doesn't work for sterilization at all

Lower temperatures (e.g. 30-40 degrees C) may even provide a better environment for bateria and/or viruses to grow.

Don't get me started on eco! Now with heat pump dryers barely heating to 45c only your washing machine can do the job now. And you need a specific function to hold a higher temperature as back in the olden days.

The 90c cycle is the only one I fully trust to get proper hot but I can't wash everything at 90

The study says none of the machines reached 60C, and 2 out of 6 only heated up for 5-13 minutes. No doubt this is so manufacturers can get the Grade A "energy rating" mandated under EU/UK regulation. (It's even worse for "Eco 60" - that only heats up to about 30C).

I think that they had at least one faulty machine. The 'full cycle' failed on only two machines, 'E' and 'G'; 'E' had an unusually low temperature of about 20c - so probably had a failed heater? (It was 9 years old) 'G' seems to have had the shortest hold time (about 5mins) - so again that might explain it; but why is it so short? Both E and G were Indesits; perhaps they need to build their machines to detect failures.

Still, maybe a failed machine is still a valid test - how many hospital staffs machines are unknowingly faulty?

A quick fix would be to swab staffs clean clothes every so often (or put a test patch in with their washes?) and check it.

A hot dry cycle will also help with this through desiccation but is more damaging to clothing. Should be fine for scrubs though.

Not true. It depends on the pathogen.

I'll wager the ones that do the poorest job in removing pathogens are also the most power and water efficient. Trade-offs matter.

Remember the way VW had a digital deception built in to some of their cars that adjusted the emissions when it detected they were being monitored?

Seems like I ended up with a software-controlled washer that is not very straightforward in its behavior and it may have something to do with energy rating.

There's no setting to get a hot rinse, not even a warm rinse, as expected. All those were taken away decades ago on purely mechanical models anyway, but at least a "hot" wash is still there. A mainstream US washer uses the household hot water supply though, they do not self-heat the water. You have two separate water inlets to the machine, one for hot water, one for cold.

You put in the laundry, start a hot cycle, and the drum starts to fill by opening only the hot water supply. It keeps filling whether the top lid is open or shut but it will not start agitating unless the lid is down.

When the lid is open, you can feel how hot the water is as it pours in.

As soon as you shut the lid, the cold water opens up too at full blast even though you just wanted hot. You can hear it and feel it for a second if you open the lid, but then that cuts off the cold and all you get is hot as long as it's open.

Saves a lot of energy when things are not as hot as people think they are.

Since less water would increase the detergent concentration, I was wondering if the opposite was the case. My family's old washer filled up the entire tub with water, so any detergent (and any pathogen, to be fair) would be quite diluted.

Short cycle length certainly makes sense to be correlated with pathogens. The lousy LG "TurboWash" only takes 28 minutes to do a full load of laundry but certainly doesn't get very much clean in that time.

I have to admit it was surprising that textiles have been identified as the source of hospital acquired infections. You'd think that even if the laundering didn't eliminate pathogens, it would greatly reduce them and make any clusters more diffuse.

As I understand, it's been identified as one possible vector, not conclusively proven to be the only (or even largest) source.

I'm not familiar with the machines in this article, but you can look up the specs on them and see what you find.

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With the prevalence of vanity scrubs from figs now I doubt most nurses and doctors I’ve seen recently are throwing their fancy scrubs into the communal wash.

I read another article testing this. The conclusion was similar in that all programs failed to get rid of all pathogens but all you had to do to achieve that was to put some bleach in the wash.

The ones in this study are all relatively new front-loaders. I would've liked to see some much older and top-loader machines in there too, along with "traditional" TSP-based detergent.

That's why you dry your clothes on the washing line in the sun?

My HOA has decreed that clotheslines are prohibited.

But my state has also made it illegal to prohibit the use of clotheslines, a "right to dry" law.

It seems insane to me that a group of people who live near you can tell you how you dry your washing. From a UK perspective, HOA's seem mad.

The UK also has homeowners associations and some of them ban outdoors clothes drying.

I'm surprised you didn't know that.

I live in the UK and I've never heard of that - do you have any examples? The one thing I could find is leasehold covenants prohitibing it, but that's almost always moot and ridiculously difficult to enforce.

HOA rules and local ordinances are written by the most petty people who have the least other stuff going on and the strongest desire to use threat of violence to control other people.

With selection bias like that it's not surprising what you get.

HOA's are a death cult to keep the home values of all houses within them guaranteed to go up. The sad part is that it works - HOA neighborhoods have guarantees that things which (old white people) hate, like loud parties, will not happen.

Stop buying HOA homes, and people will stop forming them. The market has spoken and a lot of Americans love them.

I live in a condo and share a roof, walls, and driveways with my neighbors so an HOA or something like it is probably required. I am thankful that my HOA board is mostly hands-off, and many of the more petty rules are not enforced.

If I had to buy a standalone home, I would probably have to pay considerably more and live in a worse part of the neighborhood.

> My HOA has decreed that clotheslines are prohibited.

Is there a reason for this? I'm struggling to come up with a sensible reason tbh...

Many HOA rules are purely esthetic. Which can vary from person to person.

"There’s status in a neatly tended space that conveys a message of respectable conformity and leisure. There’s also a strong cultural rejection of useful productive things because they’re useful and productive.

"My favorite example of this concept is the humble clothes line. Is it legal to dry your laundry in the sun where you live? In many parts of the country this is expressly forbidden by law and/or private binding agreement. This sort of activity is associated with rural peasants, impoverished slum dwellers, dirty hippies, white trash (or worse), and is at odds with the look and feel of a prosperous community. It might be a scorching day in August but everyone is compelled to operate a mechanical dryer in the house and crank up the air conditioning because anything else is shameful and verboten."

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/6/the-other-pitch...

So, are you drying your clothes outside?

The thing that always surprises me about HOAs is that a country boldly calling itself "land of the free" is the one where people are willingly entering agreements telling them what they can or cannot do with their washing, how they can park their vehicle on their property, or how much and how often they can cut their own grass in their own garden. I don't see how these two are mutually compatible, I always expect a more boisterous "don't tell me what to do" attitude from Americans but it looks like a lot of them do in fact enjoy being told what to do(or they put up with it, at least).

Obviously other countries have various regulations around this stuff too, but it's just not as aggressive and not as wide spread as HOAs are in the States.

It's a regional thing. In my area on the West Coast, an HOA would be unthinkable.

> is the one where people are willingly entering agreements

“Willingly” makes it sound like there’s a lot more choice in the process than there is. Many municipalities want a free lunch when it comes to approving new developments—they want all the tax revenue without any of the pesky costs of road maintenance, trash removal, drainage maintenance, etc. The solution? Approve the development with an HOA—now that’s the neighborhood’s problem (tax bills are still due in full though!). They apply this playbook over and over until the large majority of houses coming on the market are in HOAs. Buyers in these markets severely limit their choices (in an already limited market) if they eliminate HOAs from their search.

No, it's why you throw your scrubs in the hospital laundry.

Article is about healthcare workers taking their laundry home, and the resulting sustained pathogens in a medical setting.

Do a lot of apartments have access to a washing line? Also seems kinda slow?

This is fair - no it won't work in every situation, just didn't see good old air and sunshine mentioned in the thread anywhere.

Surely the only scalable solution in a medical context is to get workers to change out of uniform at work and hand over to industrial laundry service, everything else relies on procedure outside the work environment which not everyone is going to do reliably and is difficult to supervise / QC.

If 90% of workers are able to effectively sterilize their uniforms, will that solve 90% of the problem? Less? More?

Less because pathogens multiply again once they are back in the clinic.

slow? much faster than hanging them up to dry inside

It's slower than throwing them in a standard dryer, in both clock time and human effort time.

Depends a lot on the climate and season.

A lot of people I know would be constantly sick from allergies if they did this.

Drying is far more destructive to pathogens. The "sanitize" option is on the dryer, not the washer.

On my dryer, it says "sanitize with regular fabric selected (and manual time set to maximum)".

It's little suspicious that the paper was written by George Jefferson.

This is why I hate seeing all the medical people in their scrubs in the supermarket and coffeeshops around campus.

wait. nobody ever claimed washing machines killed bacterium. When I have a biohazard, I certainly don't throw it into a washing machine and certainly not with other clothing.

Would adding Oxi Clean or somesuch powder to the wash help to sterilize clothing?

Dna of a bacteria being in your machine surely doesn't mean there are live bacteria in the machine

I like Dr Annie's laundry experiments:

https://www.dranniesexperiments.com/laundry-experiments

Well c difficile is an exception rather than the rule in terms of resilience

What if you use that Lysol laundry disinfectant?

You need to add sanitizer to the wash cycle, not just detergent.

I agree… I add a capful of something like this if I think the wash needs it :

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/312705939

? You dont cook the cloths in a auto-clave- you just move it in warm water with soap- and the soap dissolves the fatty hull of the pathogens. Of course you can still detect them- the dna is still there floating around.

First, I neither have an eidetic memory or links to the patents nor lawsuit. However....

I remember finding a lawsuit, if I remember correctly, between Samsung and a certain municipality of an unremembered state.

The patent involved a lining within surfaces of the washing and drying systems for hospitals which impart silver particles. The marketing part suggested it would spare x amount of bleach and have equal or greater efficacy.

The municipal water waste management objected based on the breakdown phase of the sewage relying on bacteria. The silver, they surmised, would obviously hinder this process and so on.

Then, as a side note, you have products from waste management called eg Sludge, which is used as fertilizer. Supposedly it is forbidden on vegetable crops, but I once interviewed a cattle rancher who said his subsidies were dependent on his acceptance and use of Sludge.

Further aside, the real problem here is the 'forever chemicals' that accompany these products. It tends to permanently compromise the land it's used on.

I remember the rancher telling me he's seen his cows chewing on condoms.

Do hospitals seriously allow people to launder their own uniforms?

That would never be allowed in the food industry.

Yes. When I started working in hospitals it wasn't the case. We had an onsite laundry facility and tailor. You would obtain your uniform from the tailors, tailor made to fit, they would also repair any damaged uniform.

You would place worn uniform in a bag labeled with your name and drop if off at the laundry to collect the next day.

Then privatisation came, first they shut down the tailors and you were expected to both purchase your uniform and pay for alterations and repairs (costs you could claim back as a tax rebate if you knew how, how not being advertised.) Then they privatised the laundry, shutting down the one on site and shifting everything to a central location, by everything I mean just the bedding, you were now expected to wash your uniform at home.

The only exception I am aware of is Surgical scrubs, those were provided in sterile wraps and were to be returned to a certain laundry bin for cleaning.

You're right about the food industry, when I worked in kitchens that days uniform was provided, freshly cleaned and returned for laundering at the end of my shift.

I don't know about today, but when I worked in microbiology in the 70s & 80s all our lab coats and similar clothing were washed in central facilities - in most hospitals, the central laundry was (and still is) one of the biggest facilities in the hospital.

Yes, but does the central laundry wash all nurse and med tech uniforms?

I would be genuinely surprised if the answer was "yes".

I'm willing to bet they launder bed linens almost exclusively. (And perhaps the food service uniforms) :-)

As I said, I don't know what the exact situation is today, but they certainly did. Would you want us to be sitting on a bus, contaminated with pathogens?

What do you mean? I've never heard of a restaurant that launders the employees' clothes for them.

restaurants have laundry service for kitchen pants, jackets, aprons, right along with all the towels, napkins, and tablecloths. They aren't the employees own clothes they got from walmart, they are provided by the laundry service like the towels.

Now I'm wondering where you live because this is definitely not a thing in the overwhelming majority of restaurants in the continental US.

A few different places in different cities in NY, Albany to Saratoga. Years ago though. Mostly just for the cooks not every dishwasher or waiter.

I have worked at sit down dining and fast food, and neither places did my laundry for me. Aprons, sure, but not the rest of the clothes. The clothes which I had to buy in the first place.

Every place I've worked that had a uniform for the waitstaff and bussers had laundry service for the uniform.

Probably helped it was a hotel ...

Lucky! Chilis had me washing my own aprons.

I would guess that most restaurants already have a laundry service for their tablecloths, etc… which would also take on the staff clothes?

But i never worked in a restaurant, just guessing here.

they probably do aprons and stuff like that but even places with uniforms it's super rare that the restaurant would handle laundering clothing.

In most of the world, most healthcare workers launder their own scrubs and uniforms at home. I used to have a specific washing machine for it because I hated putting forgets uniforms with patient bodily fluids in my normal washing machine.

Things like scrubs exchange machines and central laundries washing staff gear is rare even in hospitals in the developed world.

I was a bit surprised by that when I first learned that from a healthcare worker, but it's true.

I think this should be taken care of by the employer.

If you mean from the perspective of having to do it/pay for it, you can claim I think it's £6/week for it in the UK if you don't have the option of getting it done at work (but hospitals in general do I believe).

So should sane work hours and good pay but here we are.

After watching The Pitt, they have a mini-plot line around the scrubs exchange machine like it's a normal thing. It was the first I had ever seen one, but I don't work in the medical industry. It felt like something used just to allow for the script to work.

After seeing that machine, the only way I could make sense of that machine being used is a corrupt hospital exec buying it from their cousin’s company or something.

They're probably more common in large hospital systems, especially in the OR or ER departments where scrubs are more likely to get contaminated. And where lawyers are afraid of liability.

In the UK I believe you're not supposed to, other than briefly during covid, but it's (still) common.

Also though, you think people buying & wearing their own Figs scrubs would get them back if they put them in the hospital laundry service? And what about non-scrubs for that matter?

"Allow" is a funny word.

"Require" might be more appropriate.

And I agree - the medical industry (specifically in the United States) cares more about profit than care. It's nuts.

Nor firefighting PPE.

Hard to know what to make of this when the types of detergent are not disclosed. I recall in 2022, Oxyclean was recommended for destroying MPOX virions.

For what it's worth the supplemental methods file has this to say about the detergents selected

> Two commonly used UK washing detergents were selected for the assay: a non-biological liquid detergent (15-30%:Anionic surfactants; 5-15%:nonionic surfactants; <5%:phosphonate, perfume, soap, optical brighteners, methylisothiazolinone, octylisothiazolinone) and a non-biological powder detergent (5-15%: oxygen-based bleaching agents, anionic surfactants; <5%: nonionic surfactants, polycarboxylates, soap, perfume, phosphonates, optical brighteners, zeolites)

This doesn't really mean anything to me, but maybe it means something to you?

In some sense I think the real takeaway from the study is "we shouldn't be having healthcare workers wash their own patient/pathogen facing uniforms", and that takeaway seems robust against the hypothesis that only some detergents would solve the problem. As a population we can be sure that some of the healthcare workers are going to use the detergents that don't solve the problem.

Interesting, the materials and methods says:

> Each wash cycle was performed with either biological (14g per kilogram of fabric) or non-biological detergents (20g per wash).

But your quoted passage describes two non-biological detergents. So did they use a biological detergent or not?

Anyway, the first one sounds like Persil liquid:

https://www.ocado.com/products/persil-laundry-washing-liquid...

> 15-30%: Anionic surfactants. 5-15%: Nonionic surfactants. <5%: Perfume, Phosphonates, Soap, Optical brighteners, Methylisothiazolinone, Octylisothiazolinone

And the second one sounds like Persil powder:

https://www.ocado.com/products/persil-fabric-cleaning-washin...

> 5-15%: Oxygen-based bleaching agents, Anionic surfactants. <5% Nonionic surfactants, Polycarboxylates, Soap, Perfume, Optical brighteners, Zeolites, Tetramethyl acetyloctahydronaphthelenes

Not quite the same, but similar. Both are perfectly normal brand-name household laundry detergents.

> But your quoted passage describes two non-biological detergents. So did they use a biological detergent or not?

It depends on what experiment in the paper you are looking at.

The supplemental section is addressing the "Laundry detergent tolerance induction assay" (a heading you can ctrl-f for) where they only used the non-biological detergent, "as biological detergent contains enzymes and other potentially disruptive components that may influence the assay".

If you go to the results section you will see results for both the biological and non-biological detergent under "Decontamination efficacy of domestic laundry machines" and so on. I didn't see anything specifying what biological detergents were used.

The second one sounds similar to oxyclean.

Maybe use a long cycle for the washer.

I thought that was the point of the dryer? The washing machine just removes dirt.