Today I read a news article about fungus growing in dishwashers. To make it even more disturbing they tested two dishwashers right here in Utah where I live and they both tested positive for fungus. Seems that in a recent study 62% of dishwashers were found to have fungus growing in them, six out of ten seems like quite a lot to me. I spent the rest of the day nervously searching the internet for “fungus in dishwasher” while waiting to get off work so I could go home and check out my fungus ridden dishwasher.
Personally I wouldn’t think anything would grow in a dishwasher, that water is pretty hot and the heat from the dry cycle, much too hot! I always thought hot water would kill just about any bacteria, but I guess it’s not the same for a fungus.
When I got home from work I went straight to the dishwasher, my rubber gaskets are black so it’s kind of hard to tell if there is a fungus hiding there but I’m not taking any chances. I run vinegar through my dishwasher occasionally, we have hard water so I even splash vinegar in with every load, but apparently that is not enough.
The article said to scrub your gaskets with a non abrasive cleaner, I used soft scrub and an old soft toothbrush; it was kind of difficult to rinse but make sure you do a good job, you don’t want the cleanser to sit on the gasket. The articles I read online suggested cleaning these gaskets once a week.
Next I pulled out the racks and looked at the bottom of the dishwasher then I went online and found my exact model and took the bottom sprayer arm off and cleaned under it. Mine wasn’t as bad as the one in the picture about but it was still very dirty. Hard to imagine that your dishes are getting very clean if all that gunk is accumulating at the bottom of the dishwasher.
After I got everything put back together I checked the spray arms to make sure none of the holes water should spray out of was clogged. Finally, I put everything in back in and ran the dishwasher with just vinegar. I’m not sure I killed all the fungus, but at least now I feel better. And to think, yesterday I didn’t even know I had to worry about fungus in the dishwasher!