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.
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...
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?
