Cohousing-L Mailing List: Dishwashers (related to thread on common meals clean up)

[Joani Blank (jeblank]

A couple of people have asked me about sanitation with 
residential dishwashers. Commercial dishwashers require 
the use of chemical sanitizers, because even though the 
water is superheated, the wash cycle  is so short (2.5 
to 3 minutes) that the exposure of any germs to the hot 
water might not be long enough to absolutely assure 
their being killed dead! However some people don't 
realize that all modern residential dishwashers preheat 
the water to 140 or more, and since they can take close 
to (or quite a bit longer) than an hour to wash and 
rinse the dishes, the dishes come out just as clean 
from them as they come from a commercial dishwasher.

Have you ever heard of someone getting sick because 
they ate something off a plate that just came out of a 
dishwasher?  I'll bet it's never happened.

Joani