Monday, August 09, 2010

So do we all need to sterilise our clothes now?

I don't often watch adverts on television - partly because life is too short to deal with a constant stream of corporate bull, and partly because I don't think today's ads match up to the crackers of my youth - the Flake girl, the Milk Tray Man, the Smash space aliens,  that kind of thing. Mostly, I am watching things that have been recorded so I can flick through them.

However, last night, I learned, courtesy of Vanish, that my clothes are all bacteria ridden because I wash them at too low a temperature and I need to buy their new product to kill off 99.9% of all germs so I'm nice and clean and safe.

Oh for goodness sake! I don't subscribe to the idea that your house needs to be some type of sterile environment. Mine never has been and actually Anna's probably had less childhood bugs and illnesses than many of her friends, so there might be something in my slovenly ways.

This sort of scaremongering marketing makes me angry. The people whose health is compromised by their environment are those who are living in houses or flats that are falling to bits, with damp, or are too cold, or too overcrowded. Those people are trapped by poverty and it's going to take a lot more than a tub of washing powder to improve their situation. Telling affluent people that their clothes are bug infested and that they need to do something about it is quite risible in my opinion.

6 comments:

subrosa said...

Aye, now you can't blame smokers for polluting clothing the marketeers need something else to keep the masses in a state of fear for their health.

It'll get worse.

Oldrightie said...

A while back I posted on the ad saying automatic liquid soap dispensers were necessary to avoid contaminating the plunger nozzle! Now, since you squirt, wash then rinse and dry, what the ffs does it matter if salmonella is on the plunger. Assuming the soap is any good of course!

Voter said...

I agree.

I would like to see more advertisers being held responsible for what they say

Anonymous said...

Bacteria live and die in a logorithmic World.

They divide in 2s then 4s then 8s and so on.

If you stuck you hand in a lump of Sh1te, smeared it all over and measured the bacteria per square cm you would get a figure of say 10 times 10 to the 8th log, (just a figure for argument)or 10 billion cells per sq cm.

If Dettol or Vanish can reduce that by 99% that would be equivalent to reducing it to 1 hundredth of the original level or, 10 million.

As the bacteria can replicate, say every 30 minutes that 10 million becomes 20 million (all theoretical because of other factors but) and one hour from the washing it is 40 million. 2 hours from the wash up it is 640 million.

You need to wash your hands reasonably often,certainly before preparing raw food (salads, marinades etc)

The other thing is that the bacteria on your dried clothes will be doing sweet FA if the clothes are dry and not impregnated in other nutrients, like sweat. The would need to be soaked in water with other good nutrients as well to make a decent bug soup.

They final thing is that we live with bacteria and other micro organisms. We have done so all our evolutionary life. Most (99.9+%)are benign to us. In fact our subcellular mitochondria, a very part of our metabolic structure, are in fact the residue of bacteria which we incorporated away back in evolutionary slime past.

These adverts really should be exposed for what they are, bullshit

FACT!

It is all a load of bollox---FACT

Anonymous said...

Sorry no ability in comment box to express logorithmic figures that would be instinctively understandable.

Anonymous said...

Just re-read y post the initial figure, if 10 billion, should be 10 ties 10 to the 9th log.

It really doesn't matter, the odd billion here or there. A bit like Gordon Brown and his approach to economics.

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