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Comment by Ferret7446 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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?

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)

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.

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.

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

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

The issue seems to be with storing them after cooking and before consumption.

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.

> Do you also sterilize your kitchenware?

In the US, the FDA requires commercial dishwashers to hit 165F. Consumer washers usually start around ~120F (from the water heater) but even my "landlord special" cheap GE washer claims to hit 140F, which is enough to kill off 99.99% of bacteria in just a few minutes.

So, yes, more or less involuntarily - although I certainly don't mind the lack of salmonella on the forks I use to prick chicken breasts.

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.

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