Washing up liquid

[summerlovin']

Do you have to rinse after using washing up liquid? I never do, my parents say I'm lazy and wrong. (Not that it's got anything to do with how I wash up). Can it leave a residue which is harmful?

[woofgang]

certainly, if you don't rinse glasses then beer or other fizzy drinks can go flat in the glass, also some of the new, strongly scented ones can leave a scent on things if not rinsed properly...especially if you drip dry instead of tea towel drying (now there's another debate!!)

[darth vader]

It is carcinogenic. before you panic and start scrubbing your pots, pans and stomachs with chloros please remember it is only very very very very mildly carcinogenic and extremely unlikely to affect you. Bear in mind there are many naturally carcinogenic things around you throughout your life (cooking oil for one) and rather than panic about them all you should simply remember that they are all very unlikely to give you cancer. That's my opinion anyway!

[darth vader]

ps. woofgang i never knew that! i suppose i should rinse all glasses after washing then if i want a frothy pint?

[thewillow]

I never used to rinse dishes until I became acquainted with some Swedes a number of years ago. Swedes are horrified by people not rinsing dishes and told me that it's only in English-speaking countries that people don't do it.

[Gef]

Washing up liquid is NOT carcinogenic and neither is cooking oil (unless you use Castrol GTX!!). My own experience is that beer or cider froths more than usual in a drip dried glass compared to one cleaned in a dishwasher. I dare not even mention tea-towels :-)

[woofgang]

Darth, dishwasher rinse agent and washing up liquid both contain surfectants (as will you tea towel if not completely rinsed, or is a little greasy which has the same effect.) Thes interfere with the surface tension properties of fluid, hence less or no froth on your beer or bubbles in your champagne

[darth vader]

I was first told of this by my science teacher at Kitson college so no reason to doubt him. However, a bit of googling shows:
http://www.natural-health-information-centre.com/s
odium-lauryl-sulfate.html - SLS and SLES are commonly found in liquid soaps.
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~stzintra/riskassessme
nt/shflist.php nice list of carcinogenic chemicals
http://www.udri.udayton.edu/UDRI_Extranet/News/new
s0903.htm a study on olive oil and canola oil carcinogen emmissions. There you go Gef, plenty of reasonable evidence they are carcinogenic - can you give me evidence that they do not contain carcinogens?

woofgang thanks for the tip - we have a dishwasher actually....

ps i re-iterate that whilst these are carcinogenic they are in so minutely miniscule amounts as to not affect you in one bit. probably. you will find a great number of elements around the house and home which will in fact contain Cgens but not to any level that would affect you - mdf and chipboard contain formaldehyde which is Cgenic for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0%2C3858%2C4485522
-110922%2C00.html

[darth vader]

i rest my case for the defence. ps iterate or re-iterate?

[Gef]

Point taken darth. However, the first website you quote is so full of inaccurcies that I would discount it. When I said "not carcinogenic" I should have said "very low risk" We don't want the non-chemists to panic.

[darth vader]

yes that was my point too - there's absolutely no reason to reach for the sterilising fluid etc... just because they may be Cgenic

[vittoria]

my mum says they are carcinogenic and I always rinse, but I would imagine if you don't rinse a few times it's one thing, but a lifetime of non-rinsing (and swallowing residue?) might make the risk less infinitesimal...

[Bert]

I just want to say to darth vader "MINUSCULE", please! And (re safety), you cannot prove that anything is "safe", since you would have to test an infinite number of possibilities for an infinite length of time on an infinite number of people before you could conclude that anything is (100%) safe. Just one negative result, however, is enough to show that something is not "safe".

[ChicagoMike]

I've always wondered why this habit developed in the UK and not in America. The Swedes noted in a previous post are mistaken: here in the U.S., we always rinse the soap off our dishes. It would be considered, frankly, disgusting not to do so. I can remember heated discussions with a former Welsh friend living in New York who never rinsed his dishes. I could always taste dishwashing liquid whenever I ate at his house. I'd constantly be sneaking glasses to the sink to rinse them off before I'd use them out of his cupboard. He thought I was nuts. But, like someone who's used to loose tea instead of teabags, when faced with the other option, you can really taste the difference.