[v1ne]

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.

[HWR_14]

> 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.

[rmah]

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.

[poly2it]

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?

[akshayshah]

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.

[HWR_14]

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"

[vintermann]

I thought they did that everywhere.

[DebtDeflation]

>your clothes would not last that long

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

[ajuc]

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.

[HideousKojima]

> 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.

[aaronbaugher]

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.

[MisterTea]

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.

[zippyman55]

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

[dreamcompiler]

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.

[altcognito]

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.

[dreamcompiler]

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

[xattt]

People often dry their clothes for several hours during the day to take advantage of the sun.

[deeThrow94]

Not to mention UV will break down the fabric itself.

[HPsquared]

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

[balfirevic]

> 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.

[danielbln]

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.

[gessha]

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.

[derbOac]

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.

[com2kid]

Dryers can be set to dry on a lower temperature. Sure it takes 30 minutes longer but clothes last a lot longer. Best of both worlds IMHO.

[DebtDeflation]

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.

[SoftTalker]

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.

[ghaff]

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.

[firesteelrain]

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.

[Tagbert]

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.

[energy123]

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

[wkat4242]

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.

[eptcyka]

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.

[alistairSH]

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.

[firesteelrain]

I do that, just hang it inside though

[ghaff]

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

[MisterTea]

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.

[eptcyka]

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.

[MisterTea]

> 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.

[quickthrowman]

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.

[antman]

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.

[ajuc]

It's something that takes 15 minutes of work once a week. The rest happens in the background without your involvement.

Negligible benefits.

And the machine takes space in small European flats.

[Glawen]

Single spotted. With kids, you're doing laundry every day.

[ajuc]

I am married. No kids tho.

But I was a kid, and we only did laundry on saturdays. What's the point of doing it daily? Do you not have 7 sets of clothes for everybody?

[Symbiote]

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

[eptcyka]

People like us do what?

[JumpCrisscross]

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

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

[avereveard]

Why would Healthcare worker do laundry at home with potentially contaminated uniform?

Probably that is the thing to address first.

[ukuina]

> 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%...

[deeThrow94]

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).

[Tijdreiziger]

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

[ukuina]

Try this? https://i.imgur.com/WukGwvs.jpeg

[hilbert42]

"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.

[ghssds]

TSP can be bought at an hardware store and then added as needed in your cloth washing machine and your dishwasher.

[hilbert42]

Yeah, I know. My hardware shop sells packs of 2kg of TSP for less than $10 and I use it for many things—cleaning paint surfaces, removing mold (small concentrations left on surfaces even prevent mold from forming), softening surfactants including washing powders, etc.

Those of us with some chemistry knowledge do such things but those people referred to in the story are unlikely to even know about TSP let alone add it or anything else to washing except perhaps fabric softener.

I found the story lacking detail so I went to the source paper† and whilst detailed in parts I also found it quite unsatisfactory. For example, during the test only 14g of 'unspecified' detergent was added. That little amount added to my wash certainly wouldn't remove dirt or oily stains let alone blood stains (which you'd expect to find on dirty medical workers clothes).

Moreover, whilst the paper mentions there are differences between liquid and powder detergents (including rhise with enzyme) little else is said about them. (Surely one should know the exact nature of one's bactericide before one commences.)

Quote extract from paper's conclusion:

"It is however difficult to determine the antimicrobial efficacy of the detergent itself from this study investigations.…"

Why? Again, you'd reckon that would be prerequisite and part of the controls (i.e.: take a fresh concentration of 14g detergent in the equivalent of a washing machine load of clean water and test it then increase the concentration in steps until 99.99% of the bugs died (that level of kill is required of an effective bactericide).

"Several studies have showed that the HAI organisms MRSA and A. baumanii and other Gram-negative bacteria can survive washes performed under 60°C without detergent…."

"without detergent" — for heaven's sake, that's hardly relevant. Who would wash clothing without detergent? None I'd suggest let alone medical workers.

When one actually reads some of these papers one can only conclude that some conclusions are questionable. Perhaps we've a case of bullshit baffling brains (here I mean those funding the research). Had I been on the funding committee I'd have not been happy with this paper.

BTW, those conducting the research are all from a school of pharmacy, you'd reckon they'd know enough chemistry and quantitative analysis to conduct a more exhaustive test.

*†https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

[HPsquared]

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.

[wkat4242]

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.

[Doxin]

I have clothes that have survived decades of wear and are still structurally completely intact. Any new clothes I buy will last one season at best before the fabric just disintegrates. There's a definite change in fabric quality going on.

[arp242]

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

No such hypothesis was made.

[empath75]

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.

[wkat4242]

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.

[hoseyor]

> 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.