Dishwash Powder

Details

A scouring powder for the jobs a gel cannot reach: the black underside of a cooker, a burnt karahi, a stack of steel thalis after a function. IS 6047 is the BIS specification for scouring products for utensil cleaning, and the cheat in this category is almost entirely one thing. A dishwash powder can be very largely cheap mineral filler, coloured to look active, and neither the active matter nor the abrasive hardness appears anywhere on the pack. Both are printed here. Active matter is 12 percent, measured by cation titration, which is the surfactant doing the grease work. Abrasive is 46 percent graded calcite at Mohs 3 hardness and a median particle of 45 microns, and hardness is the figure that decides everything, because stainless steel is Mohs 5.5 to 6 and anything softer than that cannot scratch it. A filler chosen on price alone can easily be quartz at Mohs 7, which will, and that is where the fine grey haze on an old steel vessel comes from.

• Active matter 12 percent, surfactants named: sodium linear alkylbenzene sulphonate 8 percent, sodium C12-14 alkyl polyglucoside 4 percent
• Abrasive 46 percent, graded calcite, Mohs 3, median particle 45 microns
• Soda ash 20 percent for grease lift. Phosphate zero, chlorine bleach zero
• Measured pH 10.8 in a 1 percent solution at 27 C, alkaline by design, because carbon and baked fat come off with alkali and abrasion and nothing else
• It rinses clean, which is the risk the category never names, since surfactant residue on a plate is what you eat off. A vessel washed and rinsed under 5 litres of running water carries under 0.1 mg of anionic surfactant, measured as methylene blue active substances to APHA 5540 C
• And the honest limit on that: rinse under a running tap. A still bucket rinse leaves residue from any dishwash product, ours included
• No synthetic dye, no perfume, no chlorine bleach, no phosphate, no triclosan, no quats, no filler beyond the declared abrasive
• No preservative, because a dry powder does not need one
• No germ-kill claim is made and none is needed. A claim to kill anything requires a named organism, a stated contact time and a test such as EN 1276 run at an accredited microbiology laboratory
• Alkaline and abrasive, so gloves for a long session, and keep it off non-stick and anodised aluminium
• About 5 g on a wet scrubber per vessel, which is 100 uses from the 500 g pouch at Rs 0.99 each, and 200 from the 1 kg at Rs 0.90