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How to wash your dishes if you don't have a dishwasher with a disintegrator-ray setting
By adamg on Sun, 05/02/2010 - 11:43pm
Jane Kokernak puts together a video showing us how to disinfect dishes and pots with some bleach.
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Comments
I don't understand why we're
I don't understand why we're being given these "OMG, bleach your dishes!" commands but I've never seen a warning in a travel book saying not to eat off a plate in a 3rd world country. I'm just doing what I did last week in Thailand (where I did not get sick), or on past trips to Mexico & the Caribbean - drinking & brushing with bottled water, but washing hands from the faucet and not giving a 2nd thought to any dishes I use. (I don't like salad greens so that's not really an issue with me.) Are Mass. germs more deadly than those around the globe, or are we just that much more prone to panic?
Bleach? Bleeeccchhhh
The thought of possibly ingesting bleach residue isn't exactly appealing. Is it better than taking my chances of some gastrointestinal eruption? Toss up?
Think of it this way, though
You normally ingest a little bleach every day when you drink from the (pre-giant-crack) tap.
Personally, I'd go with the bleach - some of the things you can get from untreated water are pretty nasty. Of course, I say this as somebody with a dishwasher with a sanitizer cycle (which, in the three or four years we've had our current dishwasher, had never used).
essentially all you're saying
essentially all you're saying is that you have no idea how they clean their dishes in these countries...
When I lived in Chile, the family I stayed with always dunked their dishes in warm water with bleach in it after cleaning them. I have no idea how common this is, but at least one household did it.
I lived in Mexico for years
I lived in Mexico for years and we never did that. I think it's an overreaction.
To answer your question, avjudge:
To answer your question, avjudge, this:
depends on what part(s) of the world one travels through. I remember traveling to India back in the early 1960's ( and, from what I understand, this hasn't changed), and, for the six months that my family and I were there, no matter where we went, we could not drink tap water at all, or even brush our teeth with it. We had to drink boiled/bottled water and brush our teeth with boiled water everywhere we went. This was especially true in Calcutta and Banares, where drinking or even brushing one's teeth with tap water could get a person sick with typhoid fever, plague, cholera, and other diseases that were even deadlier than "Delhi Belly", which is another name for "La Tourista". So, but, yeh, since there are parts of the world where one really does have to watch out and boil their water, and it's not surprising that something like this has finally come to the USA, and to Massachusetts. It's better to err on the side of caution in situations like this, but that's just my opinion.
Related question
Maybe this is discussed somewhere, elsewhere: but if we're supposed to use boiled/bottled water to wash our hands, isn't washing my hands from the tap and using Purell clean enough? If not, why not?
Yep
It is fine to use unfiltered tap water, dry your hands, burn the towel in effigy, and then use a hand sanitizer.
Burning the towel is optional.
Regarding burning the towel in effigy
If you burn the towel in effigy, you're burning a mock-up of the towel, not the towel itself. I imagine this is fun to do, but it will not stop the spread of Water Plague germs.
In Russia no one was
In Russia no one was especially careful about tap water. You were supposed to boil it. Some people did and most did not. I brushed my teeth with it and got sick a few days after I got there and once this mild case of the trots was over I had no more trouble. If anyone had suggested putting bleach drops in the dish water they would have died laughing.
Whit
Same here
That was my experience when I lived in St. Petersburg the late 90s/early 00s. I'd previously lived another Russian city and had no problems with the water there (I'd been told to boil it but forgot - often) but when I moved to Petersburg I had to boil every drop I drank or be miserably sick a couple hours later. I never thought of dishwater, though, and never noticed it making me sick. I'll probably wait to run my dishawsher until we get the all clear this time, but I'm not overly worried about bacteria living on my dishes for very long.
I wonder if they still have
I wonder if they still have to boil their water in St P?
Whit
Good point
Burn the towel AS effigy to the coliform army.
Coliform? I remember those...they were fun until you spilled something and killed all of the static cling.
The reason why officials are
The reason why officials are being a bit 'overly cautious' is because, to be honest, most people are freaked out by small deviations from the norm, and many have never been outside the US (any only as far west as NYC ;) ) whereas people from other countries have to be aware of these things
Like others have mentioned,
Like others have mentioned, Ive lived in Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil. Didn't drink the tap water, but absolutely no problems brushing teeth with it, taking showers, or washing dishes.