Understood about the natural bacterial ecosystems of the human body and even of reasonably-clean (but not obsessively-sterilized) households. And I'm certainly not on a crusade to kill every bacterium (or even the vast majority
. Also understood about the variety of strains of e.coli.
(What I do in the kitchen is routinely wipe-down surfaces with a mild soap solution, and then every couple of weeks or so, nuke the place with a reasonably strong bleach solution. This on the theory that *occasional* bleaching won't lead up to biasing the kitchen surface ecosystem in favor of bad bugs, for example as happens when people over-use "antibacterial" products.)
I'm thinking ahead to the potential for bird flu (viral) to hop over to human transmission, and about possibilities involving various resistant bugs (MRSA comes to mind), and of course the old bugaboo, bioterrorist attacks possibly including smallpox.
Also, thinking back to a couple of bouts of some kind of intestinal bug in college, which were sufficiently bad to include a fever of 104 degrees. Few illnesses in my life have conjured up the feeling of "I'd rather just die than deal with another day of this," but those sure did. And a coworker of mine just got over having a mild version of this, which brought it back to mind pretty forcefully (he apparently caught it from a housemate of his, a day following very brief hand-to-hand contact).
Here's an idea that might be worth doing: someone with appropriate credentials start up a "hotel sanitation review" web page. Including such things as the results of culturing surfaces in rooms, expose' photos of bad laundry practices such as Westy came up with, photos of kitchens if there's anything truly notable going on, etc. (Unwashed bedspreads with (list of bodily fluids omitted): eeewww!) (Holy cow, anyone think of taking their Danby 5500 FL on vacation with them, for dealing with such contingencies?
In the next pandemic, the underpaid & overworked & under-trained hotel cleaning staff will become part of the front-line defense. Hotel managers have got to start up-skilling the training and up-scaling their pay. I would gladly do without the TV entirely and other optional amenities, in favor of knowing that my bed linens weren't covered with little bugges, much less strangers' DNA.
Now I'd like to play Devil's Advocate about something, and see what y'all think about this.
One of the traditional selling-points of twin tub machines has been the ability to re-use wash water. This is still highly relevant in certain parts of Australia, Asia, and the Middle East. And soon, most likely, the USA southwest.
So you have, e.g. 6 lbs. of laundry, 10 gallons of water, and however-much detergent. Then you move the load to the spin-tub and whilst that's going on, start up another wash load in the same wash water.
Now you've done 12 lbs. of laundry in the same 10 gallons of water, having added more detergent (possibly) for the second load.
Okay, now how is this any different from a large-capacity front-loader, where you might have 12 lbs. of laundry in one load, along with 10 gallons of wash water, and the same amount of detergent? Your 12 lbs. of laundry have X quantity of little bugges in it, and they end up in the 10 gallons of water in the front loader.
So, what harm if any, in splitting the wash load into two loads of 6 lbs. each, and putting them through the same 12 gallons of water in the twin tub?
