Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel Bomb here, someone needs to erect a statue
Speaker 1: of Josephine Cochrane. If it weren't for this American inventor,
Speaker 1: all of us might be washing dirty dishes by hand.
Speaker 1: Though to be fair, the closest thing we have in
Speaker 1: my house too mechanical dishwasher is me. Cochrane lived a
Speaker 1: well healed life and loved to entertain her many friends.
Speaker 1: Over the course of time, though her household servants had
Speaker 1: chipped their fair share of the family's seventeenth century China. Frustrated,
Speaker 1: Cochrane began washing the dishes herself, a task she hated.
Speaker 1: She wondered why someone hadn't invented a machine to make
Speaker 1: it easier. In she took matters into her own dishpan
Speaker 1: hands and built the first practical dishwasher, improving on an
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty design by one Joel Houghton. Houghton's device was
Speaker 1: hand cranked and only splashed water on dirty dishes. Cochranes
Speaker 1: washer was more thoughtful. It had a motor that turned
Speaker 1: a wheel that pumped hot, soapy water from a boiler
Speaker 1: over the dishes. It would take a while for Cochrane's
Speaker 1: dishwasher to catch on, but when it did, people loved it.
Speaker 1: It was the first commercially successful automatic dishwasher. But what
Speaker 1: Cochrane didn't know was that hand washing dishes can be
Speaker 1: less sanitary than cycling them through the dishwasher. Today's dishwashers
Speaker 1: use scalding hot water, high tech spray nozzles, and other
Speaker 1: features to cleanse dishes. Handwashing doesn't even come close. That's
Speaker 1: because our hands, as The Washington Post points out, can't
Speaker 1: withstand water temperatures that modern dishwashers use up to a
Speaker 1: hundred and forty five degrees fahrenheit that's sixty two degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: According to the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department
Speaker 1: of Energy, New Energy Star dishwashers use less energy and
Speaker 1: water five thousand gallons a year than hand washing does. Moreover,
Speaker 1: the sponges that we humans use can harbor lots of germs.
Speaker 1: Scientists have found nearly four hundred different species of bacteria
Speaker 1: on household kitchen sponges, and the density is astronomical around
Speaker 1: forty five billion per square centimeter. However, more sanitary doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean healthier Swedish researchers reported the kids living in
Speaker 1: households where dishes were hand washed were less susceptible to
Speaker 1: allergies compared to children living in households with a dishwasher.
Speaker 1: The researchers surmised that handwashing exposed the kids too more microbes,
Speaker 1: which jump started their immune systems. If you are someone
Speaker 1: in your home is immunocompromised, a dishwasher can be a
Speaker 1: great way to help keep everybody healthy. Otherwise, or if
Speaker 1: you can't afford one, don't worry about it too much.
Speaker 1: It's more of a labor and energy saver than anything else.
Speaker 1: And if that sponge thing concerns you, you can sanitize
Speaker 1: your sponges by soaking them in diluted bleach, or by
Speaker 1: wedding and then microwaving them for about a minute. Oh
Speaker 1: and Joseph Cochrane may not have a statue just yet,
Speaker 1: but as Romania had the good sense to put her
Speaker 1: on one of its postage stamps. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by John Paratyo and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radios. How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: from more on this and lots of other labor saving
Speaker 1: topics visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.
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