Dawn Dishwashing Detergent?

November 14, 2018

I was cleaning a pen in a small bowl of water with a little Dawn. The pen came out great and when I looked at the bowl, it too was clean. Maybe I'll try this Dawn stuff on my dishes.

November 15, 2018

Wow, Brian, thank you for summarizing the advantages of Dawn. Where did you learn so many details?

Ah, shucks!

Seriously, I've worked in a lot of different lab situations (usually as the guy who stops the buck passing) and when we cannot use disposable glassware, washing up is an important task. I started looking into simple household detergents, and found by testing that Dawn actually rinsed completely clean from glassware. We have lab detergents, certainly but they can be overkill in simple cleaning. We just rinsed a lot and added a dilute hydrochliric acid rinse to help with leaving the glass surface clean and alkali free.

In extreme cases we use stuff like sulfuric acid/potassium dichromate solutions to actually destroy -obliterate- contaminating proteins and similar soils, but I always try to stay with more ecologically-favorable answers. Biodegradable Dawn, anyone?

Today, as a microbiologist I spend some of my time teaching culinary students, and it is important to be able to answers all questions with authority. We know, for instance, that far more bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc. are removed by thorough washing and rinsing than by use of sanitizers. So wash, rinse, and rewash, and rinse some more. That's what dishwashers do, but they can need help. (In fact, sanitizers used in food service are just an extra step to make us feel better; proper cleaning does much more of the "heavy lifting", and absent proper cleaning, no sanitizer will do all that much -so the cleaning capacity of different commercial products, is critical. Dawn would work in a small kitchen which handwashes their cookware.)

As a former chemistry professor all of this fascinates me anyway. Surfactants are fun. Dawn is a stable proprietary formulation; P&G has no reason whatsoever to tamper with blue success. It is a simple formulation, a responsible company (remember those birds!), so what's not to like? All the competition, maybe excepting Ivory, wants to find a Dawn and reap the $$$ harvest.

By the way, my favorite cleaner for pens (aside from dilute ammonia, which has been used forever) is Kodak Photo-Flo. It us almost identical to the surfactant we use when we wish to disrupt cells to extract, say, DNA. (Photo-Flo will also work very well on ink stains on clothing. It can also be diluted heavily, and added to make an ink "wetter.") Oh, Dawn will work, too, and usually provided in kits for classroom use to extract DNA. (You can extract DNA safely at home, just check for instructions online.). Must be something magic in that stuff!

Could it be that blue is my favorite color?

November 16, 2018

Just in sear ch of info.: I've heard that the UK equivalent of Dawn is Fairy Liquid.

Can anyone confirm this? Or suggest other brands?

Thanks.

November 17, 2018

I... found by testing that Dawn actually rinsed completely clean from glassware. We have lab detergents, certainly but they can be overkill in simple cleaning.

Out of curiosity, can you say how Dawn compares to Liquinox? Thanks!

November 25, 2018

Some great info that puts my mind at ease. I am getting into vintage pens and finding how neglected many pens are that are sold on eBay and need a good cleaning.

November 25, 2018

Hey, if it works to clean oil off of birds, it should be good for our pens, right?

It is kinda... weird... every time there's an oil spill, out comes Dawn's oily critters montage commercials.

November 25, 2018

Ah, shucks!

Seriously, I've worked in a lot of different lab situations (usually as the guy who stops the buck passing) and when we cannot use disposable glassware, washing up is an important task. I started looking into simple household detergents, and found by testing that Dawn actually rinsed completely clean from glassware. We have lab detergents, certainly but they can be overkill in simple cleaning. We just rinsed a lot and added a dilute hydrochliric acid rinse to help with leaving the glass surface clean and alkali free.

In extreme cases we use stuff like sulfuric acid/potassium dichromate solutions to actually destroy -obliterate- contaminating proteins and similar soils, but I always try to stay with more ecologically-favorable answers. Biodegradable Dawn, anyone?

Today, as a microbiologist I spend some of my time teaching culinary students, and it is important to be able to answers all questions with authority. We know, for instance, that far more bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc. are removed by thorough washing and rinsing than by use of sanitizers. So wash, rinse, and rewash, and rinse some more. That's what dishwashers do, but they can need help. (In fact, sanitizers used in food service are just an extra step to make us feel better; proper cleaning does much more of the "heavy lifting", and absent proper cleaning, no sanitizer will do all that much -so the cleaning capacity of different commercial products, is critical. Dawn would work in a small kitchen which handwashes their cookware.)

As a former chemistry professor all of this fascinates me anyway. Surfactants are fun. Dawn is a stable proprietary formulation; P&G has no reason whatsoever to tamper with blue success. It is a simple formulation, a responsible company (remember those birds!), so what's not to like? All the competition, maybe excepting Ivory, wants to find a Dawn and reap the $$$ harvest.

By the way, my favorite cleaner for pens (aside from dilute ammonia, which has been used forever) is Kodak Photo-Flo. It us almost identical to the surfactant we use when we wish to disrupt cells to extract, say, DNA. (Photo-Flo will also work very well on ink stains on clothing. It can also be diluted heavily, and added to make an ink "wetter.") Oh, Dawn will work, too, and usually provided in kits for classroom use to extract DNA. (You can extract DNA safely at home, just check for instructions online.). Must be something magic in that stuff!

Could it be that blue is my favorite color?

See silly stuff like this is exactly what made me want to be a biochemistry major for my pre-med work. My little sister in law is going to have to make due with her phony "psych/bio" degree that has no use other than med school applications. I'm actually learning stuff.

Edited November 25, 2018 by Honeybadgers

November 25, 2018

Liquinox undoubtedly will do a much better job at removing many proteins and other biological soils and greasy resides, especially from tight areas such as the bores of pipettes. It is unquestionably a more aggressive cleaner. For those circumstances, I always made sure alconox/liquinox in hot water, soaking, and brushing were used. An overnight soak would often let us avoid a chromic acid wach. But a lot of glassware gets no-where near that soiled, and a brushing in Dawn in hot water, followed by plenty of rinsing in running water, would do the trick. I tried it out on some enzyme tests we ran that would be sensitive to small quantities of residue, and the blue stuff worked fine.

Curiously enough, before Alconox and Liquinox became well known in the mid-1960s, some pretty good biochem labs used Tide clothes detergent as a glasware cleaner, because it cleaned and rinsed well. Just really slippery stuff!

It turned out that it was important to not allow protein soils to dry on glassware; rinsing or submerging the flask, pipette, or beaker in a wash bucket made clean-up much easier. I guess mom was right when she insisted that after drinking a glass of milk, you should rinse it in cold water.