[HN Gopher] Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher d...
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Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and
rinse aids
Author : miduil
Score : 93 points
Date : 2022-12-01 20:21 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jacionline.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jacionline.org)
| Konohamaru wrote:
| What is the solution? (Don't have the focus to read, understand,
| and analyze the scientific paper atm.)
| anon291 wrote:
| Realistically, rinse aid is hardly necessary.
| ketralnis wrote:
| The trouble isn't the solution so much as the precipitate
| sramsay wrote:
| The real news here is that there is such a thing as a "gut-on-a-
| chip."
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| Is my reading of the summary correct that it is only (or mainly?)
| talking about rinse aid and not about the detergent?
| ars wrote:
| Yah, it seemed the same to me.
|
| I don't use rinse aid, never have, you don't actually need it,
| you can just let the dishes air dry for slightly longer.
|
| If you have hard water then soften it, rather than use a rinse
| aid.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It is talking about professional dishwashers like the ones
| used in restaurants. So if you dine out on a regular basis
| you're probably getting exposed to this stuff even if you
| don't use it at home.
|
| PS I have no chemical expertise, but the article singles out
| alcohol ethoxylates as the cause of this damage. And while I
| don't use rinse aid in my home dishwasher, my Cascade
| dishwasher pods list "Isotridecanol Ethoxylated" as an
| ingredient, which may be one of these substances? At least
| this gets rinsed off, though I doubt it gets rinsed
| completely.
| Bud wrote:
| quercusa wrote:
| If I remember chem class correctly, -nol indicates an
| alcohol (ethanol, methanol...)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Many years ago I worked as a skivvy in a hotel kitchen. We
| never used any detergent for the crockery, it just used
| extremely hot water. The dishes seemed very clean and they
| dried very rapidly.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yep. If the water is hot enough you don't need chemical
| detergent or sanitizer. But we're talking about water
| that is almost boiling -- you'd only find dishwashers
| that hot in a commercial kitchen.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| How... many... years ago? When I started cooking
| professionally in the 80s three-stage hand wash had
| already been required by health codes everywhere for
| decades. I've seen all kinds of shit but every kitchen at
| least _has_ the setup and chemicals for that for health
| inspections if nothing else. In practice even the
| sketchiest restaurants will have quats even if they only
| fill it once a day.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| GP is talking about a commercial dishwasher. You can't
| hand wash hot enough -- you'd get serious burns. So
| anything you hand wash needs the three-stage wash, rinse,
| sanitize process with detergent and chemical sanitizer.
| jandrese wrote:
| If the purpose of the substance is to make the dishes dry
| faster it makes sense that it would not be fully rinsed off
| at the end of the cycle. In theory you would hope that they
| would evaporate off of the dishes, but that leads to air
| quality issues, so all in all these rinse aids seem
| problematic.
| hammock wrote:
| Rinse aid and detergent both have the same active, harmful
| ingredient: sulfates aka AES aka surfactants. The difference is
| that detergent gets rinsed off, while rinse aid IS the rinse
| (vs plain non-aided water).
| magila wrote:
| I suffered from chronic diarrhea for years which I attributed to
| Crohn's disease. This seemed obvious since diarrhea is a very
| common symptom of Crohn's, but its onset had been several years
| after I was diagnosed and prior to that I had tended more towards
| the opposite problem (constipation). I was thus always suspicious
| that the root cause lay elsewhere. After much experimenting I
| found that if I ran my dishwasher through an extra rinse cycle
| the diarrhea went away.
|
| I tried many different detergents but never found one which
| didn't cause problems, so I've just continued to run an extra
| cycle. My GI doctor didn't really believe me when I told him. I
| wonder how many people are having their IBS/IBD symptoms
| exasperated by detergent residue left on their dishes.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Wait, people were serious when they said we shouldn't eat Tide
| Pods?
| trebor wrote:
| Ironically, the summary isn't as good as the "Key Messages"
| section at the bottom:
|
| > * Professional dishwasher rinse aid causes cellular
| cytotoxicity and directly impaired barrier integrity of gut
| epithelial cells by damaging TJ and AJ expressions in daily
| exposed concentrations. > * The underlying mechanisms of
| epithelial barrier disruption in response to rinse aid were cell
| death in 1:10,000 dilutions and epithelial barrier opening in
| 1:40,000 dilutions. > * The alcohol ethoxylates, an ingredient of
| the rinse aid that remains on washed dishware, caused the gut
| epithelial inflammation and barrier damage.
|
| It appears to be the rinse aid when used in professional
| dishwashers utilized in restaurants, etc, due to high
| concentration of the rinse aid contaminating the "clean" dishes.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah in industry they are often called sanitizers because the
| purpose and mechanism are fundamentally different from the home
| ones people are familiar with. Or as a common chef quip: "the
| dishwasher is the guy running it, the machine is a sanitizer."
|
| They are notoriously bad at removing food residue, which must
| be sprayed or scraped off before running. Anything more than
| trace is cooked onto the dishes. They're really good at
| removing thin layers of grease quickly, and sanitizing. Doesn't
| surprise me at all that they don't do a final rinse; handling
| stuff right out of them leaves a distinct feeling on your
| fingers, like the opposite of bleach kinda. You have more
| friction than you should until they fully dry, it's very
| noticeable.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Importantly, when they tested a household dishwasher, they
| didn't find the same issues:
|
| > In contrast, the residual substances on the cups washed in a
| household dishwasher with detergent B were not present at
| sufficiently high concentrations to exert cytotoxicity and
| impair the epithelial barrier function (see Fig E9).
| JonathonW wrote:
| Also, they've only tested one professional dishwasher and one
| household dishwasher using one specific formulation of rinse
| aid.
|
| There's enough here to indicate a need for further
| investigation, but not enough data to come to any overall
| conclusions about commercial or household dishwasher safety
| in general.
| hammock wrote:
| If you use a rinse aid in your dishwasher I bet you'd find
| harmful results.
|
| Home detergent does contain AES (sulfates) but it gets rinsed
| pretty well. However if you use rinse aid, the rinse water
| itself has surfactants (AES, more sulfates), which will
| remain on the dishware- that's the whole point actually, so
| the water beads off.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The rinse aid prevents beading, actually. Beading is what
| leaves the spots.
| hammock wrote:
| Yes I had it backwards. It's the old "add soap to water
| to break the surface tension" kids science experiment:
| https://youtu.be/ho0o7H6dXSU
| joezydeco wrote:
| One of the most popular brands in the US, Jet Dry, has the
| ethoxylated alcohol mentioned in the article:
|
| http://www.rbnainfo.com/MSDS/CA/FINISH%20-%20JET-
| DRY%20Rinse...
| [deleted]
| b20000 wrote:
| So what does this mean for all of us who buy coffee at coffee
| shops every morning? Will this cause serious problems long term
| since we are consuming residues of their dishwasher chemicals?
| One potential solution is to always get your coffee to go, but
| that probably only partly solves the problem.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Oh I bet that is a frying pan fire thing. The cups are probably
| endocrine disrupters too with a plastic lining.
| hammock wrote:
| Hot beverage cups are coated with polyethylene which is one
| of the most inert polymers you can get. You could do much
| worse.
| hammock wrote:
| What are you getting from a coffee shop that has been through a
| dishwasher? The mug?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| There are a lot of things than can go wrong when you order from
| a restaurant or coffee shop. There could be diseases, bacteria,
| virus, chemicals or even contaminent such as glass parts or
| insects. The answer to this question would be to only order
| from places you trust - and even then, contamination can happen
| quickly and in invisible ways.
| lazide wrote:
| As anyone who has worked the back of a kitchen can attest,
| there are almost no actually trustworthy restaurants.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I've worked in several, and if you mean "infallible" OK,
| but I can assure you the people I worked with gave a damn,
| cared, and would never intentionally slack off, or do a
| poor job, placing people at risk.
|
| Maybe you just worked with/for terrible people?
| xeromal wrote:
| One of the dirtiest, worst people I know is a sous chef
| at Flemings. Take that for what you will.
| doitLP wrote:
| It's time to place all chemicals in the "unsafe until proven
| safe" category.
| fire wrote:
| huh, I didn't know home and commercial rinse aids were any
| different?
| skrbjc wrote:
| Based on the paper it seems to be primarily an issue with
| dilution. They say home dishwashers dilute it to a rate of
| around 1:80000, the commercials ones are around 1:1000 -
| 1:10000. The problems they observed seem to happen in that
| lower dilution range.
| blackhaz wrote:
| How to recognize an alcohol ethoxylate?
| hammock wrote:
| Anything that ends in "sulfate" on the ingredients label. Or
| anything that is labeled "detergent" or "rinse aid."
| awinter-py wrote:
| wonder how the proliferation of small motors + robots will affect
| the use of chemicals in applications like this
|
| better robotics tech can reduce chemical use by:
|
| 1. spot application of sponge in place of general application of
| chemicals
|
| 2. more targeted application of chemicals (only when + where
| needed)
|
| 3. replacing poison for pest / weed elimination with smart mobile
| traps (have seen laser POCs for both bugs + weeds)
|
| 4. cleaning materials for recycling using targeted friction
| instead of soap. separating oil and food scraps from drain water.
| separating human waste from gray water (and selling the nitrates)
|
| even for something innocuous like brushing your teeth, a robot
| can use advanced sensing to modify the dose of fluoride
|
| feels like lots of 'bits to atoms' projects here for someone who
| enjoys garbage
| blockwriter wrote:
| It's endocrine awareness day on Hacker News
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33816861)
| jasonhansel wrote:
| I don't think the OP proposes an endocrine-related mechanism
| for this damage.
| hokkos wrote:
| I use white vinegar instead of a dedicated rinse aids.
| boomchinolo78 wrote:
| Oh wait....cue gluten-allergy
| merth wrote:
| I think I have gluten-sensitivity(cant confirm). I rarely eat
| out. always order delivery, use plastic fork. I dont have a
| dish washer.
| jliptzin wrote:
| What the hell is rinse aid anyway
| hammock wrote:
| It's just surfactants. Aka detergent. That doesn't get rinsed
| off, it gets "rinsed on." It's function is to make water bead
| off the glass so that water spots are not left
| derbOac wrote:
| Dishes also dry off faster as water beads off more.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Useless liquid you put in your modern dishwasher which doesn't
| perform a proper drying to save energy.
| jandrese wrote:
| Residential version is marketed under the trademark "Jet Dry".
| It's intended to prevent hard water spots on your dishes, but
| most people don't care enough or don't have this problem so
| it's not heavily used.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| It's a special liquid you put in a compartment in your
| dishwasher to make it work better.
|
| I don't bother; I've tried it and haven't observed any effects.
| xxpor wrote:
| It really depends on if you have a dishwasher that relies on
| evap for drying, or an explicit heating element. The latter
| is becoming more rare as time goes on.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How would dishes dry then? Is there at least a fan
| providing air flow?
| xxpor wrote:
| This is why rinse aid is critical, you have to minimize
| the amount of water on the dishes. The extremely hot
| water tends to heat up the dishes enough so they retain
| enough heat to evaporate off the rest of the water.
| Plastic stuff like cups tends to stay pretty wet since
| they don't have the thermal capacity of metal or
| porcelain. A big advantage with this design, other than
| the energy savings, is that you don't have to worry about
| putting plastic stuff on the bottom rack, since there's
| no localized source of heat that can melt them.
| RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote:
| Rinse aid is completely unneeded if you properly maintain and use
| your dishwasher.
|
| I never use any, and my dishes are completely spotless. 30 years
| old dishwasher, super hard water.
|
| Specifically, you should:
|
| - always fill the salt of the dishwasher's water softener once
| it's empty. It cannot soften the water if it doesn't get cleaned
| by the salt. If the water is not softened you will get spots.
| EDIT: Apparently US folks often have dishwashers which don't
| soften the water. Ugh. In Europe I haven't even heard that such a
| thing exists! :|
|
| - configure the dishwasher to your water hardness.
|
| - do NOT use detergent which is advertised as "you won't need
| salt". This is garbage for lazy people. It cannot properly
| replace the water softener. Think about it for a moment: The
| detergent is meant to fully dissolve during washing so you won't
| have it on your dishes after the final water cycle. The only way
| it could affect the softness of the water in the final cycle is
| if it did NOT fully dissolve in time. So there are two factors to
| be optimized which contradict - stay long enough to soften the
| water, but not long enough to leave remainders on the dishes. It
| will never work properly.
|
| - This is not related to rinse aid, but you should know it: Clean
| the sieve regularly, at least every week. It will get ultra nasty
| with gunk if you don't. If you have no time for cleaning it, buy
| a second one, switch them once one is dirty and put it among the
| dishes so the dishwasher washes it like a dish.
| casion wrote:
| Fill the salt? Configure for water hardness?
|
| I've never heard of either of these things before. Certainly
| not things on my, relatively fancy, dishwasher.
| quantified wrote:
| US consumers are easier to sell to, perhaps.
| teekert wrote:
| I've never seen a dishwasher without this :)
|
| But I think most people here in the Netherlands never set it
| up correctly and go for "all in 1" tabs. I never do, always
| set it up correctly. I do feel I need rinse aid to not have
| that nasty feel to the glasses.
| RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_salt
|
| The water hardness setting determines how much the water
| softener tries to soften the water.
|
| If the water isn't soft enough, it will leave spots on the
| dishes. Hence people use "rinse aid", so the improperly
| softened water would drip off before it leaves spots.
|
| If the water is properly softened it contains no calcium etc.
| which could cause spots on your dishes.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Ditto, no clue what either of those mean. Never, ever heard
| of adding salt to a dishwasher, certainly. Not in new ones,
| not in ones from the bad ol' days when they used way more
| water but actually worked.
| djpr wrote:
| I have a new one (a few years old) and yes there's a
| compartment for salt. My previous one did as well. I'm in
| Europe (Spain) if that helps. I don't go to any special
| store to buy them, any old Lidl or other supermarket has
| it. Where you from where this isn't a thing?
| jasonhansel wrote:
| My dishwasher doesn't have a salt compartment or any sort of
| water-softening features; in the US, I haven't heard about this
| feature. Apparently it's a UK thing?
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| I know Miele has a water softener feature. That's the only
| time I've heard of it in the US.
| pdq wrote:
| There are a few Bosch models with dishwasher salt
| dispensers, but it's extremely rare in the US.
|
| It's a great idea, given most municipalities have hard
| water.
| swader999 wrote:
| Yeah I need it with my well water. But generally we just
| put up with spotty dinnerware. If we have guests over,
| we'll wash whatever by hand before.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Fill the salt? I'm not sure all dishwashers have a receptacle
| for that. Ours doesn't, and I'm pretty confident that I've
| never had one that did across several states in the US and one
| place in Belgium.
|
| Is the salt for doing a softening process that substitutes for
| a whole house softener if you don't have one?
|
| We live in a place with hard water and have no softener in the
| house (you should see our electric kettle when we haven't
| cleaned it recently). Recently the accumulation of what I
| assume to be mineral film has gotten a bit noticeable on the
| dishes that go in the dishwasher.
| cj wrote:
| My dishwasher has a "salt" light that lights up when the salt
| is low.
|
| The dishwasher is also 30 years old. Miele G 680 SC from
| 1992. Living in New York. Perhaps adding salt was more common
| in older models.
| [deleted]
| codetrotter wrote:
| > Apparently US folks often have dishwashers which don't soften
| the water. Ugh. In Europe I haven't even heard that such a
| thing exists!
|
| I've only come across this in Spain so far. Never seen in
| Norway. But maybe I just haven't been paying attention. Then
| again, the water in Norway in :chefskiss:
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| For everyone confused by this comment: In some countries you
| might find dishwashers with a sort of built-in water softener:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_salt
|
| It's not common in the United States. Some all-in-one detergent
| packets might contain some amount of dishwasher salt, though.
| cvoss wrote:
| In my limited experience in the several places I've lived in
| the US, only one had an issue with water that was hard enough
| to need addressing. Most residences there had a dedicated
| household water softener, so even there the dishwashers
| didn't need to do their own softening.
|
| Here's a nice map [1]
|
| [1] https://homewater101.com/articles/hard-water-across-us
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I'll give you an upvote for that little dive into Wikipedia.
| For those who haven't already swum as deep, the article on
| ion exchange resins[0] is also worthwhile. Turns out they are
| used for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel as well as softening
| water. Plus a few other things.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion-exchange_resin
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| I did bad in high school chemistry, I never could
| understand this stuff. First, the ion exchange resin beads
| are washed with Na+ which bind to the beads. Second, the
| hard water is run through the beads and bad stuff like Mg2+
| has a stronger attraction to the beads than Na+, so the Na+
| is pushed off and Mg2+ binds to beads. The resulting water
| out of tap is softer because Mg2+ is out, but saltier
| because Na+ is in. Then once in a while the beads are
| flushed with Na+ again with the Mg2+ being sent down the
| drain... but how does this happen if Na+ has a weaker bond?
| How can it push the Mg2+ off the beads??
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| "It's not common in the United States."
|
| If US folks are looking for this feature, it can be found on
| higher end Bosch dishwashers in the US.
|
| I have very hard water and a Bosch benchmark series. The
| water softener makes a _huge_ difference. I don 't want a
| whole-house softener because I don't enjoy the feel of
| softened water in the shower.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| > - always fill the salt.
|
| rinse aid is for hard water. restaurants probably tend to not
| treat the water and the commercial dishwashers they use
| probably tend to not have a provision for salt. they operate
| very differently than your residential dishwasher.
|
| So yes, completely unneeded if you have soft water. Most
| dishwashers don't have a provision for salt.
|
| Also completely unneeded if you don't mind spots.
| literalAardvark wrote:
| I have hard water and a dishwasher with a softener. The
| plates are dramatically cleaner if there's salt in the
| softener, no matter what detergent i use.
| johndoughy wrote:
| > our results suggest that alcohol ethoxylates were the main
| culprit component of the rinse aid responsible for the observed
| toxicity and damage to the epithelial barrier integrity.
| aaron695 wrote:
| seydor wrote:
| maybe dont wash them that often
| wutheringh wrote:
| I know a guy who washed his dishes, and he died
| merth wrote:
| I know a guy, who has 20 pans and all dirty, washes no 19 to
| cook his 2$ stake. what a legand.
| zgin4679 wrote:
| You'd think the stakes couldn't get any higher!
| PainfullyNormal wrote:
| True story!
| zgin4679 wrote:
| I knew Bill, too. Good man, clean dishes. RIP, Bill.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| You should start a business: a restaurant that serves your food
| on the previous diner's unwashed dishes.
|
| It would be like my college apartment kitchen, so you could
| hire me as manager.
| seydor wrote:
| The Healthy Gut Epithelium Restaurant*.
|
| *you might die of other causes, though
| jasonhansel wrote:
| You just need to buy the special "no-wash" dishes.
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(page generated 2022-12-01 23:00 UTC)