Daily Quiz for May 13, 2019

[Mike Nolan]

Should you use warm or cold water when washing your hands?

[See the full post at: Daily Quiz for May 13, 2019]

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[Joan Simpson]

Got it.And I had read about the regular soap versus antibacterial before,

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by Joan Simpson.

[RiversideLen]

I'm of the opinion that warm water washes things off better than cold. And then there is the comfort factor.

[Mike Nolan]

I agree with you on the comfort factor. My wife thinks grease comes off easier in warm water, but that really depends on the type of grease, because some of them have pretty high melting points. I keep a dispenser of Lava liquid soap by the kitchen sink, because it works better on greasy hands than anything else I've found. A friend of ours works as a diesel mechanic, I bought him a case of Lava dispensers as a Christmas present a few years back.

[aaronatthedoublef]

And drying your hands with a towel is apparently important too.

[Mike Nolan]

As opposed to air dryers, paper towels are much healthier. (Whether they're better for the environment is another matter.)

[Italiancook]

I missed this one, because hubby always uses cold water & I've not been convinced that cold removes germs. I stand corrected.

[Mike Nolan]

Newsweek used to have a regular column called 'Conventional Wisdom' in which a recurring theme was that the CW was wrong more often than it was right.

If you're trying to clean things with grooves in them, hot water will usually make the material expand, making the grooves smaller and harder to clean.

[BakerAunt]

There was a company that specialized in little square towels that people could carry with them. I don't know if it still exists. The idea was to cut down on paper towel usage.

So, all those dishwashers with the hot water that is supposed to sanitize and kill germs--do they actually work?

[Mike Nolan]

The water in a dishwasher is hot enough that it helps melt grease and dissolve food. The studies referred to by the quiz answer didn't deal with removing dirt or grease, just bacteria.

I've had my doubts about just how good the 'sanitizing' cycle is in a dishwasher.

According to various reviewing organizations, any home dishwasher made in roughly the last 5 years is going to be less efficient at cleaning dishes, in large part because of governmental restrictions placed on the amount of water that a dishwasher is allowed to use. The cycles are longer, too, probably in the hopes of compensating for the water restrictions.

I'm glad I haven't had to replace a dishwasher lately. As I understand it, commercial dish washers have not been affected by these regulations, because there are requirements placed on them as to how well they have to clean, so they're allowed to use more and hotter water.

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