When Dishwashers Kill – Scientists Find New Way For One In Four Of Us To Die
SCARE Story of the Day is provided by Harry Wallop, who pounds the consumer affairs beat for the Daily Telegraph:
The inside of the appliances, which four in ten homes in Britain own, are the perfect breeding ground for fungi associated with potentially deadly illnesses.
An ice-cream maker? No. The fearsome dishwaser:
The moist and hot environment, combined with the alkaline water caused by the dishwasher tablets, means that the machines appear to have created a previously unknown and possibly serious threat to human health…
A new way to die! Oh, happy day. The discovered of this new way to die is made by Dr Polona Zalar of the University of Ljubljana. You can read her findings in the journal of Fungal Biology and here, where she talks about black yeast in glaciers. This new research is given the headline:
“Dishwashers – A man-made ecological niche accommodating human opportunistic fungal pathogens”
Elsevier, which publishes and sells the organ, prefers the headline:
“My dishwasher is trying to kill me”
Wallop tells us:
The scientists studied 189 dishwashers in 101 different homes around the world. They found 62 per cent of dishwashers contained fungi on the rubber band in the door. More than half of these included the black yeasts Exophiala dermatitidis and E. phaeomuriformis which are known to be dangerous to human health.
His words are eerily similar to the press release – one he makes no mention of.
How dangerous is the fungus? Dr Zalar says “the potential hazard they represent should not be overlooked”.
Her co-author Nina Gunde-Cimerman tells the Daily Telegraph (and she’s available for interview to make this research fly):
“One thing that is not in the report is that we tested the dishes after they had been cleaned in these dishwashers and they were full of this black yeast, so too the cutlery that you put in your mouth. We just don’t know how serious this could be.”
So. Even the scientist is saying the stuff might not be dangerous.
Wallop is undeterred:
Black yeasts are particularly dangerous for people with cystic fibrosis, as they are able to attack the lungs. They have also been found to occasionally cause fatal infections in healthy humans.
We get no facts. That press release contains very few. ut can it be made more scarier? Science Daily tries:
The discovery of this widespread presence of extremophilic fungi in some of our common household appliances suggests that these organisms have embarked on an extraordinary evolutionary process that could pose a significant risk to human health in the future.
Or not…
Posted: 22nd, June 2011 | In: Scare Stories Comments (10) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
June 22nd, 2011 at 9:54 pm
so what is the thing we should do nowm then ? tell us what we have to do !!!!
June 22nd, 2011 at 5:51 pm
Gotta tell you all they are bang on reporting the danger. I’m a global warming denier and think the whole green thing is a pile of horse shite. So I read these reports with some scepticism but there is more to this story than mere scaremongering.
The bottom seal in my Bosch dishwasher is hollow, a stupid design fault, and every few months a brown gunk builds up and oozes out from each end. Christ knows what it is and I have to squeeze the thing along it’s length to make sure it’s all gone and then run a cycle with bleach a couple of times. Fark, I’m feeling sick just thinking about it. This stuff gets into the main cleaning area and is not good I’m sure.
Check it out if you don’t believe me on your own. Just be sure to have a bucket handy to collect up the vomit you will find rising in your throat.
Arrrggh. Make sure you don’t read this till some time after you have eaten. Ooops sorry, too late.
June 22nd, 2011 at 5:16 pm
You’ll probably get poisoned by the chemical reaction instead
June 22nd, 2011 at 4:54 pm
is it working if i put half cup of bleach in empy dishwasher then put the dishwasher on with prewash powder in?
June 22nd, 2011 at 4:49 pm
put the bleach in empty dishwasher would kill all ?
June 22nd, 2011 at 3:53 pm
any excuse to the women back in the kitchen and up to their elbows in soap-suds.
Know your place woman!
June 22nd, 2011 at 3:31 pm
If that dishwasher is indeed a killing machine, can someone get that poor dog out….
June 22nd, 2011 at 2:16 pm
the Wail will be furious that it’s missed out on this particular scoop….!
June 22nd, 2011 at 2:07 pm
Dishwashers just bring along different arguments. Instead of who’s washing and drying, it’s who’s emptying and stacking. If it’s my daughter’s turn to empty, we end up with a pile of dirty plates etc. on top of it all day.
June 22nd, 2011 at 2:01 pm
But they do save water and divorces