Did you ever wonder why everything is dirtier? Wonder no more!
I’m old enough to have a vague memory of clothes so white that they were called bright. This happened despite the absence of additives — the ridiculous varieties of sprays and bottles and packets that festoon our cabinets today and that we throw into the wash to try to boost the cleaning power of our pathetic machines and increasingly useless laundry soap.
Then, the other night, I experienced an amazing blast from the past. I added a quarter cup of trisodium phosphate (TSP) and otherwise “treated” nothing. The results were nothing short of mind-boggling. Everything was clean — clean in a way that I recall from childhood.
Next came my confrontation with the local dry cleaner, which I’ve used for years. I explained what happened and how puzzling it is that by using TSP I was able to clean my clothes more thoroughly and perfectly than his commercial service.
He was not shocked. He completely agreed, though sheepishly.
They don’t want you to know what the problem is.
Read it all and weep.
Comments
9 responses to “Dirtiness is next to Godliness”
Donald Sensing is going missing, after a visit from John Galt no doubt.
http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2013/09/tattoo.html
He will join Pat Santy, Daphne Klink, and many others at Galt’s Gulch. M. Simon is providing a beacon so he won’t lose his way.
Safe journey.
A quarter cup is waaaay too much. A level tablespoon would have done just fine
Frank I am sorry to see that. (Although I am tempted almost daily.)
After some very quick research it seems phosphates weren’t used in commercial laundries and laundry powders until the 40s. If so, that would mean those bright clean clothes you remember only occurred for 30-some years. And I think you understate the effects on our waters.
I wash my laundry with soap nuts, which don’t need a rinse cycle, so I save 50% of the water right there. And I do dishes by hand, boring boring it’s true, but the hot water feels good on my arthritic hands. And things get clean enough. Now I know someone out there is going to jump all over me, so have at it.
Take your laundry down to the river bank and beat it with rocks, can’t get more organic than that. Make sure they’re all natural, minimally processed, free range rocks.
I can vouch for everything he wrote. A couple of years ago my dishwasher stopped getting my dishes clean. After some research I found out that trisodium phosphate had been eliminated from detergents. A couple of spoonfuls is all it takes to get bright, clean dishes again.
Jennifer–
In one of my many job function, I have experimented with soap nuts.
If you use enough to achieve the required level of surfactants for a good cleaning, then they need a rinse cycle. Feel-good hippie crap is still just crap.
see?
Have you looked for TSP in the hardware store lately? It’s funny how many products have TSP in their name but contain no TSP. I’ve seen “TSP-90” and “TSP-PF.” Even “TSP” in giant letters, with “substitute” in tiny print below.
I’d like to observe that stating a fact as observed is not “jumping all over someone”.
The effect on waters is interesting because it is quantifiable. My reading on the subject indicates that effect of consumer detergents has always been a very tiny proportion of the problems from phosphates, and there has been no observable improvement that can be attributed to the removal of phosphates from consumer detergents.
I’ve lived in 4 US jurisdictions since the ’90s, and in each lived in a home that was served by a sewage treatment plant. In each place, the sewage treatment plant has the appropriate equipment to remove all but trace amounts of phosphate from the waste water, and none have the problem of mixing of storm and wastewater that causes overcapacity and release of raw waste during storm events.
I recall reading a 1977 paper that the science was a no-brainer — Based on Swedish experience, eliminating phosphates from detergent would cause much more environmental degradation than leaving it in and treating the wastewater to remove the phosphates. I know that the wastewater from my home is so treated, so the correct environmental thing to do in my case (if I choose to use automatic washing machines for dishes and clothes) is to use cleaners containing the optimal amount of Phosphate. TSP is not the same as the phosphate additive that was used up until recently, it contains more solids that can leave residue.
My solution has been to ignore the laundry problem, as I have a bigger problem with high dissolved iron in my water causing discoloration. (No point in spending money on additives for me there…) For dish-washing I just buy my Cascade at a restaurant supply house, and let the R&D chemists at Proctor & Gamble determine the optimum proportion of sodium tripolyphosphate in the mix.
SODIUM TRIPOLYPHOSPHATE