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Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

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Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago in my country overuse of powder detergents was well known by all the manufacturers; this is when fixed serving sizes were developed as a way to contain the problem and they are also considered more convenient by most consumers. I was working in one of these companies at that time, so I know the subject pretty well.

I would have assumed that overuse was a desirable outcome for the manufacturer.

If you put less detergent in the packs, they are cheaper per package. This is good, because that means the price can stay the same for more profit.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same effect for me. SLS toothpaste gives me canker sores. Or at least prevents their healing

I also had to switch from SLS toothpaste. I used to use a thing called Rembrandt gentle, but they stopped selling that so I started using something called Squigle, which has atrocious branding but is just fine. I have some amount of uncooked nut allergy and chocolate allergy that causes similar effects to SLS toothpaste. I'm still trying to figure it out. I wanted to pass along this product I found a few years ago th…

I'm also SLS sensitive. I found "Verve" toothpaste on Amazon. Reasonable minty taste, cheap, and SLS-free. There are options out there but you really have to search hard for them.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The non-pouch detergents disappeared ? I still see them everywhere. And a quick Amazon search for “cascade complete” lists gel as the first result and powder as the third.

The local supermarkets all stock literally one or two boxes on the shelf at a time, even though I know they have more in the back because as soon as I buy one it's put back on the shelf the next day. Something really funny is going on, I wouldn't be surprised if they had some contractual arrangement to artificially limit the amount that appeared in stock, to make it seem less appealing.

As someone who has worked in a grocery store I think you're reading way too much into it. They have priorities when stocking shelves but I think conspiracies by Big Detergent to get you to buy tide pods are low on the list.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#375
post #350

The news around this, this thread, and similar on Reddit seem to be assuming a jump that isn't supported in this paper. "The residue remaining after the rinse cycle varies between 1:250 to 1:667 for the dishwasher detergent and 1:2,000 to 1:10,000 dilutions for the rinse aid." This is actually an uncited claim in the paper, and the paper authors did not test it. "In the present study, we hypothesized that if the dete…

I can smell detergent scent on my dishes after a wash and rinse, even if I don’t use rinse aid. Maybe my dishwasher’s rinse cycle isn’t very good: but if so I imagine that I’m not alone. I agree with what you’re saying here in terms of the raw findings, but I wonder if as a society we’re approaching this question wrong. Specifically: if I proved that dishwasher detergents contained a toxic chemical (say: arsenic), sh…

I agree, caution still seems justified, whenever we find toxic effects of materials we might contact daily it's worth considering whether the risk that this is a real and present threat is worth the benefits of having those things around. Similar story with Teflon, plastic packaging and utensils, clothing detergents, surface cleaners, micro-beads in face products, cosmetics, talcum powder, deodorant, etc.

For this specific case, I'd still rather see the evidence that most dishwashers, when used according to manufacturer operating instructions (or even when used as most people operate them in practice) actually do leave enough dangerous chemical residue on the dishware to be a risk and that significant amounts of this stuff transfers to food before I'd say it's a claim the manufacturers have a burden of defending. Similar claims could be made about ceramics and glazing for instance, and the ceramics would harm us if ingested, but there's no evidence that ceramics from plates transfer to foods as we eat, even if we cut food on the plate with a knife. Of course, ceramics don't tend to dissolve readily in water either so we can presume detergents and rinse aids have some higher chance of transferring to food if present.

Of course the reality is, if enough people take the sensationalist headlines seriously, the manufacturers will have to defend it anyway; but this effect is what makes organization leaders assume most people are too stupid to hear the truth about nearly anything and the root cause of things like bad nutritional advice recycling over and over again.

Many people are still afraid of stuff like MSG, even though it occurs naturally in many foods and has been proven safe over and over again. The root cause of that scare was a science article in the New England Journal of Medicine back in 1968 which was sensationalized by the New York Times. Bad memes like "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" are prevalent enough throughout the history of scientific literature to merit an equal portion of caution before reacting to any single paper with too little skepticism or too much drive to change our lifestyles or behaviors.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm allergic to lemonenes ('citrus/orange smell'), the oil in the shell of citrus fruits. It's in everything. Deodorant, soap, detergent, various cleaners etc. Every time there's some sort of "better smell" somewhere, where it's just "nice to have" I think: why? Why have this as well on top of everything?

Probably someone just trying to make a buck. We all gotta eat and doing something "meaningful" often seems like the worst possible way to try to keep a roof over your head. Doing something seemingly trivial that you imagine won't be controversial and that will be a "nice to have" for enough people to pay your own bills probably seems to some people like the best way to get by in this world. And they probably didn't t…

Your statement

> "we all gotta eat" is […] root cause of a lot of ills in the world today

hits the nail quite well I think. People are forced to generate income, even when that is to the detriment of other people or the environment. Natural resources are exploited without restraint, factories keep producing incompatible, low quality electronics and online services that harm mental health but create a profit are pushed onto markets with great vigor.

But with the advent of machines of human-level ability (physical & cognitive), within the next decade, human labour will not be competitive any more. This provides us a unique opportunity to overcome the traditional compulsions of our current growth-fixated economic framework and transition to a steady-state, cooperative economy (aka RBE) instead. That means leaving behind barter trade and local optimization for individual or company profit, paving the way to a good life for all, without time pressure and compulsory work. We (Open Source Ecology Germany) are actually working on getting funding (via PrototypeFund.de) for a cooperative economy simulation game.. To make it easier for people to imagine a post-capitalist economy and to start working on rules and organisational mechanisms for such a society. HN is invited oc ; )

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago in my country overuse of powder detergents was well known by all the manufacturers; this is when fixed serving sizes were developed as a way to contain the problem and they are also considered more convenient by most consumers. I was working in one of these companies at that time, so I know the subject pretty well.

I would have assumed that overuse was a desirable outcome for the manufacturer.

There were a couple of very undesired side-effects that manufacturers hate because it was making the consumers angry:

1. Burning the color of clothes.

2. Irritating the skin (hand-was was very common, it still has some use cases even today).

Also there was a move around 2003-2004 to increase the concentration of automatic washer detergents, that was meant to decrease the transportation cost for manufacturers, but overuse was even riskier. I know it was done, somewhere before 2005 when I left that area of business, part of the solution was a big marketing campaign, another part was switching to liquid detergent with a measuring cup, also including a measuring cup in the package with the larger sizes. I don't know what happened later.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stand-alone. I got two cylindrical carbon filters and one fan. I slide the three components together and then stand them up vertically like a floor standing speaker. Currently living in an apartment. It scrubs the air really quite fast. Helps a lot with kitchen smoke, pet smells, cleaning chemical vapors, and new furniture/plastic VOCs. I also live in the middle of a bunch of chemical plants so it’s invaluable for th…

What size did you get and what size is your apartment? Just looked up Terrabloom and I want these yesterday.

the one major downside you'll find to terrabloom is how often you have to replace the carbon filters, but that's just true of carbon air filtering in general.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#379
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern dish washers use under 4 gallons per cycle, so given you have at least one wash and one rise cycle, you’d only use a about 50% more if you are able to opt for rinse only. Compare that to a 2.2 gallon per minute water/efficient kitchen faucet where you’ll approach the amount of water consumed by your triple cycle load after just 5 minutes of leaving your water running.

5 minutes of running water at full speed to wash up dishes seems like way too much, unless it's a really large household. Washing up after a quick meal takes a few seconds, and if a proper dinner with cooking you'd fill the sink enough to soak the load then come back to rinse.

Running the water continuously is not recommended but for people who were not taught water-saving practices, it is likely the default way one might go about hand-washing dishes.

Re: Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't use the damn pouches! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

TIL American dishwashers expect hot water input. This seems... bad?

It's only bad if the hot water takes a long time to get hot, which used to be much more problems than it is in newer systems.
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