<story><title>Does Clean Laundry Have Germs?</title><url>http://www.stopthestomachflu.com/does-clean-laundry-have-germs-1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>distances</author><text>Washing machines use cold water and heat it up themselves, so I don&amp;#x27;t see the connection?</text></item><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>An interesting side effect here is that the house water heater has its own temperature control. For years people have been turning down the temperature setting on their water heaters to save energy, as a result the typical house water heater might be set to 60C (130F) and the washing machine was doing the best it could.</text></item><item><author>e12e</author><text>&amp;gt; My sister Christy has an older top loader (not HE). She washed this laundry on hot and added the 1&amp;#x2F;2 cup chlorine bleach directly to the wash water and it was very, very clean. She measured the temperature of her wash water when the tank filled up using her meat thermometer and it was 130 degrees F. She used Sam&amp;#x27;s club detergent. Her laundry was perfectly clean (to the limits of my detection abilities).&lt;p&gt;So, 130F is just under 60C - what&amp;#x27;s usually the minimum considered to kill bacteria. While I haven&amp;#x27;t measured the actual temperature, my aging, second hand washer have three &amp;quot;white&amp;quot; programs: &amp;quot;hot&amp;quot; is 90 C, and there are two rated 60C. I&amp;#x27;d never assume any of the other programs had a sterilising effect.&lt;p&gt;If &amp;quot;hot&amp;quot; is just 60C, and often not that - I can see a need to use bleach for some loads (or other means of killing off bacteria) if the norm is to use warm (not hot) water for washing.&lt;p&gt;Would be interesting to see similar test with just water (no soap, bleach) and a 90C degree program.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d guess the results would be &amp;quot;dotted middleground&amp;quot; like many of the test here.&lt;p&gt;Also would be nice to see how hanging in the sun would effect otherwise clean clothes (airborne bacteria vs uv death ray stand-off - might be meaningless without checking for &lt;i&gt;type&lt;/i&gt; of bacteria).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rsynnott</author><text>While vaguely modern European ones generally do, American ones often don’t. I suspect this is down to the 120V power; with normal wiring you can only get about 2kW if not less, vs about 3 on a European system.</text></comment>
<story><title>Does Clean Laundry Have Germs?</title><url>http://www.stopthestomachflu.com/does-clean-laundry-have-germs-1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>distances</author><text>Washing machines use cold water and heat it up themselves, so I don&amp;#x27;t see the connection?</text></item><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>An interesting side effect here is that the house water heater has its own temperature control. For years people have been turning down the temperature setting on their water heaters to save energy, as a result the typical house water heater might be set to 60C (130F) and the washing machine was doing the best it could.</text></item><item><author>e12e</author><text>&amp;gt; My sister Christy has an older top loader (not HE). She washed this laundry on hot and added the 1&amp;#x2F;2 cup chlorine bleach directly to the wash water and it was very, very clean. She measured the temperature of her wash water when the tank filled up using her meat thermometer and it was 130 degrees F. She used Sam&amp;#x27;s club detergent. Her laundry was perfectly clean (to the limits of my detection abilities).&lt;p&gt;So, 130F is just under 60C - what&amp;#x27;s usually the minimum considered to kill bacteria. While I haven&amp;#x27;t measured the actual temperature, my aging, second hand washer have three &amp;quot;white&amp;quot; programs: &amp;quot;hot&amp;quot; is 90 C, and there are two rated 60C. I&amp;#x27;d never assume any of the other programs had a sterilising effect.&lt;p&gt;If &amp;quot;hot&amp;quot; is just 60C, and often not that - I can see a need to use bleach for some loads (or other means of killing off bacteria) if the norm is to use warm (not hot) water for washing.&lt;p&gt;Would be interesting to see similar test with just water (no soap, bleach) and a 90C degree program.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d guess the results would be &amp;quot;dotted middleground&amp;quot; like many of the test here.&lt;p&gt;Also would be nice to see how hanging in the sun would effect otherwise clean clothes (airborne bacteria vs uv death ray stand-off - might be meaningless without checking for &lt;i&gt;type&lt;/i&gt; of bacteria).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>refurb</author><text>Only very specific models of washers in the US actually heat up the water.  Most just use water from the water heater.</text></comment>