Dishwashers have a dirty little secret

TV commercials with smiling housewives unloading streak-free dishes from dishwashers? Please.

It's 2011, people. Men unload dishes, too, and no one feels compelled to smile about it.

More troubling is the revelation that dishes no longer emerge clean from home dishwashers. These days, they sport lipstick stains, icky food bits and a whitish film.

No one is smiling about it.

Thanks to recent state laws banning everything but trace levels of phosphates from household dishwasher detergents, clean dishes are a little dirtier. Phosphates are chemicals responsible for serious cleaning, but they also pollute waterways and encourage the growth of algae, which can threaten the health of fish.

Although most states don't have a law limiting phosphates in detergents, 18 do, including Minnesota. Last year, detergent companies started taking phosphates out of their products.

Consumer Reports has suggestions for frustrated consumers, besides doing testing to find the best low-phosphate detergents (see sidebar). Its tips to maximize the effectiveness of dishwashers include loading large items at the side and back so they don't block water and detergent, placing the dirty side of a dish toward the center of the machine and placing items with baked-on food facedown and toward the sprayer in the bottom rack.

Phosphorus debates in the cleaning industry began 40 years ago. By 1993, major manufacturers had stopped using it in laundry detergents, says Dennis Griesing of the American Cleaning Institute, a trade association in Washington, D.C. Automatic dishwashing detergents weren't part of the change because phosphorous was more critical to the cleaning process.

"Phosphorus likes to bind to things," Griesing explains. "It's a very sociable element. It would hold soil from plates and glasses in suspension in the water and prevent redeposition."

But in 2006, when the state of Washington first voted to limit phosphates in automatic dishwashing detergents, manufacturers saw the writing on the wall. Washington's law, which reduced the allowable amount from nearly 9 percent to a mere one-half of 1 percent, became the standard for other states.

"We went to 18 states with historical interest in phosphate control and asked them to adapt their model to Washington," Griesing said. "We had to realign chemical supply lines, make adjustments to manufacturing facilities. We knew what we needed was a uniform business environment."

Manufacturers started rolling out revised versions of their products in early 2010 for the July 1 deadline. Some consumers noticed a difference right away. Hard water, which has higher amounts of calcium and magnesium, tends to leave a residue.

Of course, this means using more water, which isn't ideal.

Griesing says manufacturers will come up with new and better products for the dishwasher; they just need time.