Laundry Experiments

You might not want to know this because ignorance is bliss. However, knowledge is power, and this is really useful information. I recently got an email from a young mother suffering from the terrible bacterial infection, clostridium difficile (c.diff). She asked me how she could protect her family and not spread the bacteria. Specifically, she wondered if the bacteria and spores were killed in the washer and dryer. I did not know the answer. I thought that surely most germs would die in the hot dryer, right? I decided to do some experiments to see. While I can't specifically test for c.diff., I can determine how much bacteria there is or isn't in clean laundry.