You keep a weekend dedicated to get all your laundry done, and the sense of accomplishment when you see a neatly stacked pile of fresh smelling, clean clothes is relaxing.
But does a wash with detergent ensure that your clothes are completely clean? A successful, ‘complete’ wash is where dirt, odour and disease-causing germs are also removed. Your laundry doesn’t just accumulate dirt, it harbors more germs than you could think of. As per a study, one item of heavily contaminated clothing can serve to contaminate an entire laundry load.
Unfortunately, washing laundry with detergent alone is not found to be effective for the removal or inactivation of all the germs. Germs including some enteric viruses like rotavirus and adenovirus1 survive and are readily transferred from contaminated clothes to uncontaminated clothes.
General physician Dr SC Ajmani says sixty degree Celsius is the ideal temperature to ensure germ kill in laundry - washing clothes is already a tough job, getting such a high temperature of water for washing will make the task too cumbersome and tough to execute.2 Washing clothes only with hot water isn’t always possible plus not all fabrics can be washed in hot water. Hot water for synthetic clothes is a big no-no. Furthermore, bright, and darker colors tend to bleed in hot water. Also, for delicate fabrics such as laces, woollen and silks - cold water washes are generally advised.
