I work for a school where there are weekly swimming lessons at our pool. We provide towels to the students. At times, we are not able to clean all of the towels so some towels may stay dirty for 1 to 2 days, at the most. How sanitary is it to not wash towels immediately? When these towels are cleaned, should we do anything different to these towels? For instance, add another dryer sheet or dry them twice as long?
By GML from Chicago, IL
To only name one MARSA staph and there is a host of others to be concerned about. I would not supply the towels but have each student bring their own at the very least you should add bleach to the wash water to kill the germs.
I don't think that letting the towels sit for a day is going to do anything terrible, unless they are developing mildew. That would be my concern. I think if they are washed in hot water with bleach (I assume they are white towels, so they can be bleached), that will sanitize them sufficiently. Dryer sheets do nothing for sanitizing that I know of.
They are for softening and adding a pleasant smell. Drying them in a dryer will also heat them to a fairly high temp that will sanitize them somewhat. You do not have to run them any longer than just to be dry, I am sure. You could give a local hotel a call, and find out what they do with their towels, as many hotels do their own laundry.
The pool is chlorinated, right? So the wet towels already have bleach on them. They will be fine for a couple of days.
I wouldn't even use the dryer sheets. They only coat the towels and make then less absorbent.
It is Mersa. Not washing the towels right away is not going to start an epidemic of EBOLA or cholera, but you should air dry them to prevent mold before tossing in the hamper. then wash thoroughly on very hot water, run your hot water 2 minutes if you do not have an automatic water heater on your washing machine. Use the proper amount of detergent(too much leaves residue behind) and then use bleach two minutes after your commercial detergent because many detergents have enzymes in them that are neutralized by the chlorine bleach.
