This is one of those which is liable to cause despair, sorry. However, it's been dropped on me, so now I need to make it go away. It's an office. People consume tea, coffee, orange squash and tap water (all supplied by the company) in mugs and glasses (tumblers) supplied by the company. Some people put other stuff, like (for example) orange juice in the glasses and cup-a-soup in the mugs. There are (ordinary domestic) dishwashers which wash the mugs and glasses every day (the cleaners load the dishwashers each evening). The glasses become slightly cloudy. This is called 'etching', though it's at a fine enough level that it can't be felt. As far as I can determine from Dr Internet this occurs when you have too much detergent for the level of dirt in the dishwasher load, and is exacerbated by too hot a wash. Our loads are obviously pretty clean - basically no grease involved - and I suspect the cleaners just whack it on a maximum wash cycle. However, someone in the workforce is vocally asserting this is a terrible health hazard, all the cloudy glasses (and probably all the other crockery too) are dripping with bacteria, everything must be thrown out. Meanwhile 'management' are asserting that we can't throw out perfectly good glasses just because they aren't sparkly clear. I can't find anything that looks particularly authoritative on the web - lots of stuff about avoiding it, but nothing about whether it's a health hazard. Does anyone know? Does anyone have a reliable looking reference as to whether glasses turned cloudy by a dishwasher are a health hazard? My inclination is that if there were nay hint that it was, I'd find it on the internet (given that according to the internet practically everything is a health hazard), and that a daily hot dishwasher wash will tend to eliminate bacteria that might fancy our glasses, but I'm not sure that's a rigorous enough approach. Please put me out of my misery, so I can return to useful and inspiring things like updating our PPE procedures. Thanks.

The temperature of the dishwasher will kill bacteria etc and therefore this should not be an issue. (If it was many of us would be ill all the time as I bet those with dishwashers have this in their own homes). For something definitive you may want to have a chat to your local Food Safety EHO who will be able to give you the commercial food safety approach. I hope this helps

When was the last time the filters etc were cleaned out? Failure to do this sometimes causes problems when a machine is on a rinse cycle. Also are you in a hard water area? If so the pipes may be furring up. A good and economical way of dealing with this is to put a few drops of citric acid (from a chemist) in a cycle on its own. This will help clear/clean out the pipes. Other off the shelf products are available.

Tell them to get over it, they can wash the mugs by hand before using them; after all they may have been sneezed on by someone, or a fly might have landed on one, or...etc. Or bring their own cups if they like. But they should let you get on with real work. Whoops bit of a rant, but I get this stuff at work and mostly it's the same people that should you suggest they tidy the floorspace around their desks so that fire routes are clear accuse you of H&S gone mad.

A typical health and safety myth - if this was an issue EHOs would deal with it at Food Hygiene visits and they don't, likewise if it was a real issue it would be all over the interweb and it isn't. If you really want to have some fun tell them how many bacteria there are on their keyboards!

I can appreciate the preference to drink from a glass you can see through but wouldn't use health as reason. Seriously, given how cheap supermarket own brand glasses are, why don't you just replace them once a quarter.

Refer to;- http://www.dishwasher-care.org.uk/best.html#rinse it includes info on how to deal with cloding of glassware

And you will never get back the hours you have wasted on this... Andy