"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:
"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:
snip
You got me going on this again. Darn you. g It was too hot to take
my
usual walk after lunch so I made some calls. First I called the
company
that
makes Finish dishwasher detergent. They said they pulled the
phosphate
out
on July 1, 2010, along with all of the other major producers. And the
reason
was, indeed, the 16 states who suddenly outlawed it, combined with
the
fact
that they didn't want to make and market two different products.
That's
similar to what happened years ago with laundry detergent.
The other call was to the NJ office of USGS, who monitors navigable
waters
here. The key researcher in this area is supposed to call me back;
the
one I
talked to didn't know the issues with dishwasher detergent, or what
the
basis was for those states (which does not include NJ) to ban TSP.
We'll
see
if I can get an answer.
This could prove interesting.
Joe Gwinn
Ok, I got the story from a guy who sat on legislative committee
meetings
while the state laws were being hashed out. It was an hour-long
conversation, so I won't try to tell the whole thing, but the
discussion
did involve a lot about Pflueger cane fly rods and fishing for
cutthroat
trout in Montana, lake trout in Canada's N.W.T., oysters in the Raritan
Bay, and so on. g
It's the news reporter genes coming to the fore. Very interesting.
Blame Washington State. And the EPA. It started with tightening of
national point-source effluent standards from EPA. That's industrial
and
municipal waste discharges.
We knew it! There had to be an EPA conspiracy!
I should add that the particular problem in the Spokane River was that baby
salmon weren't surviving because of the eutrification and low oxygen levels.
Many states were able to meet them with old-style (alum flocculent)
tertiary treatment, and new-style tertiary treatment (microbes), but
Washington allowed the overbuilding of residences around the Spokane
River, and the phosphates were filtering down through a porous
geological
cap, getting into drinking water, and overloading the sewage treatment.
The stage beyond tertiary is a microfiltering screen process and it
costs
like hell.
So it was a cost issue for the State of Washington -- and many others.
The
Washington legislators sat down with the industry association, the
American Cleaning Institute (ACI) and told them how much cheaper it
would
be to just pull the phosphates out of dishwasher detergent (remember,
this
is a point-source regulation). That was in 2006. They wanted it done in
two years. The industry said they couldn't do it that fast. They asked
for
4-1/2 years. The legislators said Ok.
The industry in Europe had tried non-phosphate dishwasher detergents
back
in the '90s, but they didn't work well and customers stayed away in
droves. In 2006, they still didn't have a solution. By 2010, the whole
industry did, and it worked very well. There are now 17 states that
have
blocked the manufacture and sale -- but not the use -- of phosphate
dishwasher detergents. The ACI and its members, once they had a
solution
that works, supported the legislation in the other 16 states.
If there is a workable solution, where is it? The whole point of this
thread is precisely that people are having one problem after another,
starting with the stink and the cloudy dirty just-washed glassware. More
to the point, what do they mean by a "solution that works"? There may
be some dispute about the definition of "works". This deserves a
follow-up question.
ACI notes that there are some performance issues, which can be solved by
observing these points: 1) Make sure your water temp is at least 120 F (mine
is 140 at the dishwasher). 2) Don't use too much detergent. If you have an
old dishwasher, about half as much as the cups will hold is about right. 3)
If you have water spots, chances are your water is hard. The guy I talked to
told me he'd just returned from Ireland, where the water is very hard and
they have water softeners *built in* to the dishwashers.
If you have accumulated cloudiness, you may need to do a periodic vinegar
treatment. Here's how they describe it:
http://www.cleaninginstitute.org/cle...detergent.aspx
You may also be interested in this:
http://www.cleaninginstitute.org/cle...e rgents.aspx
There have always been very good dishwasher detergents for scientific
glassware, but these detergents are expensive, about six times the cost
per ounce of grocery-store detergents, although the cost per wash may be
almost the same if the lab stuff is more concentrated.
The traditional and biggest name is Alconox:
http://www.alconox.com/static/section_top/gen_catalog.asp. Hmm, better
check the MSDS. Aha! Its secret sauce is two phosphorus compounds that
together comprise about half the total.
Fortunately, there probably isn't enough used to cause any problems.
Note that the ACI FAQ, I think, mentions that there are not laws against
*using* the stuff. The laws mostly regulate retail sale. My contact guy said
that all big detergent manufacturers took phosphates out, but there may be
some local ones in the states that don't regulate it, selling to the local
market.
I didn't ask him about the stink - time was short and I was more
interested in his choices of fly rods for cutthroats g -- but that's
where the change came from.
--
Ed Huntress
Oh, one thing I didn't explain: Many, or most, of those newer houses near
Spokane have septic systems, which is how the phosphate is getting into
the
aquifer. But the drinking water supplies municipal areas where they have
municipal sewers. Some big engineering firm figured out the route.
The ACI says that detergent phosphates, which now is mostly dishwasher
detergent, can be up to 25% of the phosphate load from municipal
point-source discharges.
Given that clothes washing detergent is now non-phosphate, I can believe
that dishwasher detergent now competes only with the resident humans,
who thus must account for 75% of the point-source load.
Hmm. Maybe the 75% includes commercial establishments, chiefly
restaurants and the like. They are still permitted to buy phosphate
containing detergent.
Anyway, this brings me to two questions. First, is the 25% reduction
worthwhile? Second, how does the 100% compare with ongoing agricultural
use?
Nationwide, the ag use is by far the dominant source of phosphorus in rivers
and streams. In heavily built-up areas, like around my beloved Delaware,
residential cleaning use is the dominant source, with the Delaware
apparently being an extreme, but not actually an outlying, example.
My contact guy is an exec. with ACI in charge of this subject there, with
over 20 years of industry experience. I think that further questions would
have to be directed to the EPA. I know that there is some detailed research
available that they used in their analysis. I just don't know what it is.
And, without a paying article to write about it, my work is done here. d8-)
It is quite interesting. Having followed water pollution issues in my area,
I always find it interesting, because the real research so often refutes the
conventional wisdom. And it's a consequential subject.
Which reminds me that it's time to get out my son's microscope and do a
species count of plankton in a local pond again. When he was in middle
school, he did a science project that was based on some scientific data that
ranks water quality on the basis of relative species counts. Local
water-quality officials were very interested. Too few paramecia and too many
cyclops, and you have trouble. g
--
Ed Huntress
Joe Gwinn