How do you remove commercial application laundry starch from 60/40 cotton/poly blend shirts? They’ve been laundered several times and the starch remains. Is there something that will neutralize it?s

Answer: The sizing or starch should have washed out even using home-style laundry detergents. If the item is white and can be bleached try bleaching at 1.5 times the amount you would normally use, and use hot water for the washing with warm rinses. For colored items, let the textile soak in a warm bath of detergent for a few hours and wash as you normally would. Both starch products and sizing products are water soluble, so they should be removed generally quite easily.

At what temperature does bleach start turning to gas? Should you use bleach in cooler water?

Answer: Liquid Chlorine Bleach at any strength constantly gives off some chlorine gas, and proper use-temperature depends on the specific application. If one is washing white cotton or cotton polyester textiles and the intent is to remove stains and maintain whiteness of the fabric, the following are guidelines for institutional laundering use:

Bleaching temperature is ideally between 145 and 155 degrees, with bath water pH between 10.2 and 10.8 on the pH scale. The duration of bleaching generally ranges from 7-10 minutes. In a good bleach cycle, time and chlorine-use are measured where roughly 85-90% of the available chlorine is used before the bath water is dumped to sewer.

Temperatures in excess of 155 degrees should not normally be used, as the chlorine will gas-off too quickly, creating the potential for textile damage. Cotton fibers can be weakened resulting in shorter textile life.

Lower temperatures are surely acceptable, but understand that the time for stain removal and brightening of the white cotton will take longer. However, if the exposure is too long, fiber damage is possible. As a general rule, as bleaching temperature is decreased, so is the bath water pH. This lowering of the pH in the bath allows the chlorine to gas as it should in order to do its job.

In home wash applications water is generally not exceedingly hot, and consumer-grade detergents are not high pH products. This combination allows the chlorine bleach to work properly in such applications..

What is an emulsifier and where do I purchase it? Also, what purpose does an emulsifier serve in a laundry operation?

Answer: Emulsifiers are generally special surfactant detergents that mix with mineral oils and greases, but also have the ability to mix with water. By breaking down the oils or greases into very small particles, emulsifiers hold and disperse the soil away from fabrics. Once emulsified in the water, the oils and greases can be removed through dilution. Where you can purchase them depends on the volume you’re looking for. For small quantities you will find products in the retail market. For larger amounts contact a laundry chemical supply company.

Emulsifiers help to break up mineral oils or greasy soils in laundry operations. Laundering with the appropriate combination of alkali and detergents is what removes petroleum oils and greases from textiles. The alkali, in combination with oil loving surfactants, breaks the globules of oil and grease into very small particles. The emulsifying agents then surround the particles and give the appearance of a milky substance. Once emulsified and dispersed into water, the oils and or grease are removed by dilution.

Our facility stores clean linen in our linen exchange room. Linen is transported through the hospital on covered carts and transferred to the linen carts in each area. These carts are covered, but if they are in a dedicated linen room we do not enforce keeping the cover down at all times. Is this correct or not?

Our linen exchange room has open shelving. Curtains have been installed to cover the shelving. Since it is a dedicated linen room, do the shelves have to be covered (We do not have positive air flow in this room)?

Our housekeeping department mops the floors and dusts the shelves weekly. Is this adequate? Should the shelves be disinfected on a regular basis? What would be considered standard practice in this area?

The practice of keeping linens covered at all times is good protocol. Shelving should be sanitized as linens are removed and replaced. As for floors and other surfaces, the use of a disinfectant cleaner should also be a standard practice. Specific details on the “how to” and “when” is available from JCAHO.

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