Just like a mother of three in Columbus, I placed blame where blame was not due. The mother blamed the dishwasher; I blamed my children.
Lately, I’ve been assuming the white, powdery film that occasionally remained on our dishes was the result of someone (er, some child) forgetting to add the detergent.
Alas, I read today that my children are not to blame — blame lies with the state (the state of Ohio, in this instance). And I should have guessed as much.
Turns out, unbeknownst to me, the legislators of my state saw fit to ban any dish cleansing agent “that contains phosphorus in any form in excess of one-half per cent by weight expressed as elemental phosphorus.”
Although the ban took effect last July, detergent already in a retailer’s inventory was grandfathered (explaining the sporadic and delayed effect).
Of course, there is a carve-out. The ban does not apply to cleaning agents “that are used in an automatic or machine dishwasher in a commercial or institutional facility.”
Seems we can’t have folks grumbling over dirty dishes in public. But let them grumble at home, while eating cake on filmy plates.
So now I have to either put up with the filmy particles on my dishes or use additional resources (in the form of water, natural gas to heat the water, time, etc.) to wash my dishes before I put them in the dishwasher.
What a waste! Whose idea was this anyway?
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Maybe this will help.
Low Phosphate Dishwasher Detergents That Work
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Consumer Reports tested 24 low- or no-phosphate dish detergents and found four Recommended products. Although none equaled the excellent (but now discontinued) product that topped CR’s Ratings in August 2009, seven were Very Good.
Finish Quantum (30 cents per load) topped the Ratings, followed by CR Best Buy, Finish Powerball Tabs (22 cents per load), which scored Excellent for dishes and pots, and bested some detergents that cost more.
Cascade Complete All In 1 (28 cents per load) and Cascade with Dawn ActionPacs (23 cents per load) earned a score of Very Good in CR’s tests, but all Cascades, like all Finish products, aren’t equal. Other Cascade and Finish products were scattered throughout the Ratings.
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The link doesn’t explain WHY someone would want to limit the phosphorous in a detergent, and I can’t think of a good reason myself. Does anyone know what rationalisation was used here? Or is this just a random act by a bored bureaucrat who happened to read the ingredients list on the back of his detergent one morning, and dislikes the sound of this “phosphorous” stuff?
Oh, sorry, nevermind, it’s ostensibly to prevent water pollution. However, as the link says,
“I essentially wash my dishes now before I put them in the dishwasher, which really defeats the purpose.” I wonder if the stuff this woman is washing the dishes with beforehand contains as much phosphorous? I wonder how much hot waste water is being generated as a result of this “solution”?
Which is kind of funny because phosphorous acid is used to treat water to kill off microbes and eliminate many plant diseases. Which is why it was put into the dish detergent in the first place, to kill microbes. Looking clean doesn’t mean it is (which is also why it’s recommended not to pre-clean dishes because soaps just bounce off glass and ceramics instead of sticking to them to do actual cleaning).
My understanding is that phosphate acts like a fertilizer when it is flushed into the waterways. Here in Florida they say it causes algae blooms (e.g. red tide) in the Gulf. Algae blooms use up all the oxygen in the water they occupy, and their is massive fish death. Smelly!
Well, that’s an easy fix, I’ll buy “industrial” soaps and use lower quantities.
Thanks, now I have another excuse for not buying that dishwasher my wife nags me about.
Seriously though, this should not be a surprise to any of us. We live in a nanny state. We are told what to do and how to do it from the day we are born. We are even told what we can buy. The leviathan is here! The question is what are we going to do about it?
These people can’t leave anything alone.
Laundry detergent? Really? Man, what a bunch of pests.
I wonder how much this costs the companies involved in making and selling detergent? (I assume there’s an extra cost in manufacturing another version of product in addition to ensuring all the product in a particular territory is “up to code.”) How much does this cost the state government to regulate this? This is a particularly strange thing to try and regulate at this point and time, especially since state legislature of Ohio is in the middle of a budget crisis.
Can you imagine a legislature that takes office and passes zero new laws? Of course, WE can imagine it, but those elected to the legislature cannot. After all, they are legislators; their measurable output is legislation. To not legislate is to shirk their duties.
I stopped pre-washing or even rinsing my dishes prior to insertion into the dishwasher. You need three things to do this:
(1) A good dishwasher. Mine is.
(2) Hot water. Good dishwashers heat their own water.
(3) A good detergent.
Now that (3) is in doubt, the response will be to use more detergent and to run the dishwasher longer. The potscrubber cycle — the cycle which I usually use — runs the machine for nearly two hours. And for those who want microbe-free dishes, you can buy a unit that bakes the dishes after it dries them (as mine will do). The catch with all of this, of course, is that the longer cycles use far more electricity than shorter cycles, and drying and sterlizing the dishes ups the usage again.
If legislators could predict consequences, I suppose they would be entrepreneurs instead of politicians.
I prohibit the use of dishwasher drying in my house. I refuse to pay the electric company for what nature will do at a lower cost. I only wish I could get my wife to open the dishwasher right after it is complete, using the heat of the dishes to dry them…
I did a lot of researching and testing and came up with a product that solves the cloudy dishes problem. It’s all-natural, contains no phosphate, and works great. It’s a powder you add to each wash cycle. You use 1-2 tablespoons and reduce the detergent by the same amount. So your cost per wash does not increase. Please have a look. http://www.CitriClean.net or sales@CitriClean.net
I did a lot of researching and testing and came up with a product that solves the cloudy dishes problem. It’s all-natural, contains no phosphate, and works great. It’s a powder you add to each wash cycle. You use 1-2 tablespoons and reduce the detergent by the same amount. So your cost per wash does not increase. Please have a look. CitriClean.net
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