STPP??

[letsgoblues]

I keep reading about so many people using STPP in their laundry, and I am curious what it is all about. What does it do when you add it to your laundry? Does it only work in certain temperatures? Does it only work on whites? Will it fade colors? What happens if you overdose it? Will it leave your clothes stiff and rough? Anyone use it and decide they didn't like it? For those of you that do like it, where do you get it?

Sorry for all the questions!

 

[sudsmaster]

1) What does it do when you add it to your laundry?

 

It boosts the performance of powdered laundry detergents. It does this by superior water softening, sequestering minerals from both the water and dirt on the laundry, and keeping it in solution so it is rinsed away and not redeposited onto fabrics. It also helps to break soil from fabrics, and it raises the pH to help saponify fats and oils on fabrics.

 

2) Does it only work in certain temperatures?

 

Warm to hot water is recommended for best overall washing performance, but STPP will also work in cold water.

 

3) Does it only work on whites?

 

No, it will work on non-whites.

 

4) Will it fade colors?

 

Colors that are fast with standard powders will also be fast with STPP.

 

5) What happens if you overdose it? Will it leave your clothes stiff and rough?

 

Just like with any detergent, overdosing with STPP may mean not all of it is rinsed away, resulting in stiff/rough fabric. But it would take a LOT of STPP to do that.

 

6) Anyone use it and decide they didn't like it?

 

Not me.

 

7) For those of you that do like it, where do you get it?

 

I bought my supply at a local chemical warehouse years ago. People also have been getting it from online sources like chemistrystore.com.

 

 

[tomturbomatic]

Google Search Sodium tripolyphosphate and read all about it. STPP was what used to be in laundry and dishwasher detergents that made them perform so well. If you do decide to try some, PLEASE don't go blabbing about it to everyone. All we need to do is get sales of the stuff banned.

 

[henene4]

There was a reason this stuff was banned from detergents, though.

Don't get me wrong, a few people using it won't change a lot.
But overdosing it by much, somehow getting it into any kind of open water (rivers, lakes, oceanes) can indeed damage the enviroment including animal stock as well as plant stock.

So, if your laundry is apperantly clean by now, don't use it on every single load. If you have soft water, you probably won't need it at all.
If you have a case of laundry or dishes that need it (like a lot of fat soils), use it with proper dosing.
If you are on a proper sewer system with a state-of-the-art water purification system, your impact will be minimal.

Just, so you see both sides of this stuff. It won't hurt directly, but again, using it with some brain power will always be better.

Funny side note: We here in the EU mostly replaced phosphates in laundry detergents with something called Zeolith A.
It basicly is a 3D-nanostructre, accomplishing simmilar effects as phosphates in term of water softening. Meanwhile, its not toxic (STPP can have harmfull effects, though only if ingested in high quantities), does not get into the biological system of any species and as far as I know is mostly removed even by low standard water treatment.
How it exactly behaves, though, and how one would have to use it (this stuff should be freely accessible and rather cheap) in a real life situation in terms of dosing, effects on additives and so on : I have no clue.

We still have a lot of phosphate rich DW detergents arround, though, even with any EU DW haveing a build in water softner.

 

[sudsmaster]

Don't get me wrong, a few people using it won't change a lot.
But overdosing it by much, somehow getting it into any kind of open water (rivers, lakes, oceanes) can indeed damage the enviroment including animal stock as well as plant stock.

 

Nonsense. STPP has very low toxicity to animals. In fact, it's approved for use as a humectant in various human foods. For plants, it would be less toxic than table salt.

 

The issue you may be thinking of is eutrophication. Which basically means an overgrowth of algae in still water bodies. That would exclude streams, rivers, and the ocean. And eutrophication is not triggered solely by phosphates. It also requires a surplus of nitrates, which are a main component of sewage. If sewage effluent were adequately treated to reduce nitrate load, then phosphates wouldn't be an issue. They are also not an issue in many of the more arid parts of the United States, where nitrate pollution is the main concern.

 

Additionally, the healthy human body requires phosphates for survival, and excretes as much phosphate into the sewage system as a home washer would using phophated detergent. So one may want to consider bagging one's own poop and burying it in the back yard, too.


If you have soft water, you probably won't need it at all.

 

Also not true. Water softening is only part of STPP's value. There are hard water minerals in most dirt and soil, and these create precipitates with other water softeners like sodium carbonate, which redeposit on the fabrics. Also, the ability of complex phosphates (of which STPP is one) is that they literally grab the dirt off the fabric and keep it in solution, making a phosphated detergent far more effective than a non-phosphated formula.

 

If you are on a proper sewer system with a state-of-the-art water purification system, your impact will be minimal.

 

 

It is true that advanced municipal tertiary sewage treatment systems can remove excess phosphate from the sewage stream. This should be done anyway due to aforementioned phosphate load from normal human excretion.


 


Funny side note: We here in the EU mostly replaced phosphates in laundry detergents with something called Zeolith A.
It basicly is a 3D-nanostructre, accomplishing simmilar effects as phosphates in term of water softening. Meanwhile, its not toxic (STPP can have harmfull effects, though only if ingested in high quantities), does not get into the biological system of any species and as far as I know is mostly removed even by low standard water treatment.

 

Zeolites are less effective than phosphates at water softening. Additionally, they don't have the break/cleaning ability of phosphates. Zeolites are aluminosilicates, a form of clay with very small particles and microscopic pores, and if ingested in high quantities can certainly be toxic, while STPP is an approved food additive. In fact, the clay mud that zeolites produce in the waste stream is said to be an increasing problem for European sewage treatment facilities.

 

Typically I recommend boosting a regular powdered laundry detergent about 33% by weight with STPP. This gives about an 8% phosphorus content, similar to what phosphated laundry and dishwashing detergents once had.

 

 

[stan]

Christine

STPP is a wonderful thing to have on hand. Especially if you have hard water. It can help in the dishwasher, and in the laundry. You might want to check and see how hard your water is from your local water Dept, or when your well is tested.
It can be ordered from Soapgoods, and the smallest size is 1lb container.

 

[washdaddy]

I'm going to order some of this and see how it improves results. It looks like getting it thru Amazon right now is the best bet.

 

[henene4]

On the topic of toxic properties:
A healthy, grown human can handle a certain load of phosphates. The recomended daily amount here in Germany i said to be between 0,7 and 1,5g. Thats about, meh, maybe 1/6 of the dose you recomed to add to 1 load of laundry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperphosphatemia : Not so cool either.
And given that the LD50 for rats for Zeolith A ist greater then 5g, for example I'd have to eat more then 300g and would likely still survive.

Yeah, any water treatment should catch phosphates. But dosen't do that automaticly. Zeolith A indeed increases the amount of residue in water treatment systems. But dosen't that show it catches almost all the Zeolith?

And on the topic of the additional cleaning effects of STPP:
Isn't detergent supposed to do this? And can't one simply compensate that by adding more detergent, which, at least often, contains way less impact-full surfactents that sometimes are even biodegreadable.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Adding more detergent

If the builders in the detergent are inferior, adding more of them does not make the detergent work better and then you have to use more water to rinse away excess detergent, to say nothing of over-sudsing that may occur from using more detergent.

What relationship does the safe human dosage of phosphates have to do with the amount added to several gallons of water to do laundry? A human is not drinking the wash water. Ingesting excess water is in itself dangerous, if not fatal, by disrupting the electrolyte balance in the body.

 

[arbilab]

Tom beat me to it. The things shelf detergents do wrong, adding more won't fix.

Rich beat me to it. What's 'wrong' with phosphates is they are a plant food. Sprinkled in your garden they make real big carrots real fast. Sprinkled in a waterway-- particularly a sluggish one-- the resulting algae turns the water into green jello. So if you breathe water, you don't want that.

"The problem" was known in the 60s and gradually outlawed from commercial production. This is why Tom says not to blab it around lest the substance itself get banned from retail sale.

It's only really a problem when umpteen bazillion boxes of Tide end up in the Mississippi. Your 5lb bag of it used a tablespoon at a time will last you years and have virtually zero environmental impact.

 

[tomturbomatic]

The "nasty" truth about phosphates and nitrates is not just excess fertilizer running off fields, but manure from farm animals, like when chicken shit is piled high in unprotected areas and rain carries it into streams and cows either poop into the streams in which they are standing or in the fields next to the streams and it gets carried into the water. They finally made the chicken farmers on the eastern shore of Maryland cover the manure until it can be burned. I don't know what they are doing about the other industrial farming waste problems, but there is also a lot of bull shit generated in the houses of government whenever the farming pollution problem comes up. I guess the pig shit could be dumped on ISIS, but that is a topic for a different forum.

 

[sudsmaster]

A word on eutrophication and phosphates.

 

Phosphates in water bodies by themselves do not cause eutrophication.

 

Here's why:

 

Land plants generally require three major nutrients (besides water) for growth: Potassium (K), fixed Nitrogen (N), and Phophorus (P).

 

However, the algae that cause eutrophication require only two major nutrients: Nitrogen and Phosphorus. Phosphorus in the form of phosphates is generally tightly bound to soils, so rain water leading to streams and emptying into rivers and lakes generally doesn't have a big load of phosphorus. However, nitrogen compounds are easily washed from over fertilized soil into water bodies. The result is that nitrogen is usually in abundance in water bodies near human activity, whether it be from urban or agricultural use. That puts the onus on phosphorus as the "limiting factor" in keeping algae growth down. Phosphates in sewage effluent is another matter, however, as it is added directly to water bodies without having a chance to be bound to soil. So even though phosphates alone are not the culprit in eutrophication, and there is also an abundance of nitorgen in the effluent, it is the phosphates that are the easier of the two culprits (N and P) for humans to control.

 

Out of this we get phosphate bans in detergents because humans are too messy/lazy/stupid to fix the entire problem - gross water pollution by nitrates AND

phosphates.

 

A complication in all this is that most phosphates we use are mined, and the mine resources are running out. So recovering phosphates in tertiary sewage treatment plants has two benefits: recovering a useful mineral, and limiting its introduction into water bodies. But such tertiary treatment is more expensive to implement and thus we as consumers get to suffer inferior cleaning results with phosphate-free products.

 

 

 

 

[sudsmaster]

A word on supposed STPP toxicity:

 

A "recommended" amount, or RDA, is NOT the same as the maximum that can be ingested before toxic effects develop. It is the minimum amount the human body requires to maintain health.

 

Thus an RDA for phosphorus tells us little to nothing about the supposed toxicity of STPP, other that it's fine in small amounts.

 

When discussing toxicity of chemicals, the LD50 is a good gauge to note. According to Wikipedia, the lowest LD50 for polyphosphates such as STPP is more than 1 gram per KG body weight. Thus a 150 lb person would have to consume about 75 grams, or about 2.5 ounces, of  STPP powder before toxic effects are noted. Most likely one would vomit up even a dilute STPP solution containing far less than that - it's alkaline and would taste a bit like soap or lime.

 

It's generally agreed that STPP has low toxicity. And as already noted, it's basically a non-issue for laundry and dishwashing applications.

 

 

 

 

 

[tomturbomatic]

Actually it tastes very salty. The food grade is used in a dental rinse.

 

[arbilab]

You'll also find it in a number of prepared/frozen foods. Presumably as a co-emulsifier rather than a flavor element, but who knows? ConAgra? Would you believe them if they told you?

 

[sudsmaster]

The primary purpose of adding STPP to things like seafood and poultry is not as an emulsifier (who would want to emulsify whole cuts of meat?), but rather as a humectant to help retain moisture. It is, in a way, a brining method that consumer advocates criticize because it also raises the weight and therefore the cost of the product, which is usually sold by the pound or kilogram.

 

Not sure how STPP would help emulsify... generally that term is applied to keep hydrophobic things like fats and oils in aqueous solution. Perhaps it complexes with the fats and oils and makes them more hydrophilic, thus keeping them in solution. It would also bind any minerals like calcium or magnesium, perhaps slightly retarding microbial growth that is dependent on such minerals being in a "free" state. Although I don't recall seeing that claimed as a benefit.

 

In mouthwash and toothpaste its function is probably also to help bind up minerals and aid in cleaning.