[HN Gopher] Home washing machines fail to remove important patho...
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       Home washing machines fail to remove important pathogens from
       textiles
        
       Author : bookmtn
       Score  : 19 points
       Date   : 2025-04-30 22:04 UTC (56 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medicalxpress.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medicalxpress.com)
        
       | tuatoru wrote:
       | Do hospitals seriously allow people to launder their own
       | uniforms?
       | 
       | That would never be allowed in the food industry.
        
         | iaaan wrote:
         | What do you mean? I've never heard of a restaurant that
         | launders the employees' clothes for them.
        
           | tacker2000 wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | ender341341 wrote:
             | they probably do aprons and stuff like that but even places
             | with uniforms it's super rare that the restaurant would
             | handle laundering clothing.
        
           | Brian_K_White wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | closewith wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | nadir_ishiguro wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | zabzonk wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | lallysingh wrote:
       | I'll wager the ones that do the poorest job in removing pathogens
       | are also the most power and water efficient. Trade-offs matter.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | I'm not familiar with the machines in this article, but you can
         | look up the specs on them and see what you find.
        
       | OutOfHere wrote:
       | Maybe use a long cycle for the washer.
        
       | comrade1234 wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | chewbacha wrote:
         | A hot dry cycle will also help with this through desiccation
         | but is more damaging to clothing. Should be fine for scrubs
         | though.
        
       | tehjoker wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | gpm wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | userbinator wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | neodypsis wrote:
       | You need to add sanitizer to the wash cycle, not just detergent.
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-30 23:00 UTC)