A few years ago when TIDE debuted their Coldwater detergent and claimed the new product could “get clothes cleaner than the leading competitive liquid detergent in warm water,” I was skeptical, to say the least. I have never quite worked through my skepticism and continue to wash my laundry in warm and hot water. (On the other hand, my mother swears by TIDE Coldwater.)
Forgive me if I have a hard time accepting the fact that cold water can kill bacteria as well as hot water. I blame my reluctance on a doctor Oprah once interviewed who swore that there was “absolutely no substitute for hot water,” especially when it came to disinfecting laundry and dishes. (The laundry example he used was in reference to killing dust mites and bed bugs.) Now, I hear that researchers at Ohio State University have just issued a new report, which states that washing dishes in cold water is just as effective as using hot water.
There was one caveat to their study—-cool water can do the same cleaning job, provided you use dish soap that contains ammonia. EUREKA! That explains why my AJAX dish soap has a new label, which reads, “With Bleach.” Every couple of weeks I restock my AJAX supply and buy the pink grapefruit-scented soap with the “Antibacterial” label. Just the other day I looked over at my existing AJAX bottle and noticed it read, “With Bleach.” I figured I must have been in a hurry to get out of the store the day I bought it and inadvertently grabbed the wrong one. And, oh yeah, by the way, since when did AJAX add bleach to their product?
Now I know why. What’s more, according to the study, I can use it when I want to clean my dishes in cold water. In the study scientists washed dishes that had been covered with cheese, eggs, milk and jelly. They also smeared the plates with E. coli and other bacteria that cause food-borne illnesses. They washed one batch of dishes in hot, soapy water and found it killed off nearly all the germs. However, they got the same result when they washed the same bacteria-laden dishes using cool water and dish soap with bleach. Researchers also found that dishes washed in soapy room-temperature water, rinsed, and then weakly sanitized with ammonium-based chemicals achieved FDA-acceptable results.
Truth be told, I have a dishwasher (which I run using the hottest water possible) so it is rare that I would need to wash a dish by hand. Maybe, just maybe, the next time I do I will remember the study, and PERHAPS resist the temptation to slide the faucet handle to “Hot.”
Do you wash your dishes in cold or hot water?
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