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Children Have Fewer Allergies When Families Do Dishes by Hand

By, Cari Nierenberg, Live Science

Doing dishes the old-fashioned way — by hand — might help curb a modern-day problem: rising rates of childhood allergies, a new study suggests.

Researchers in Sweden found that children living in families that hand-washed their dishes were about 40 percent less likely to develop allergies compared with kids in homes that used a dishwasher, said study researcher Dr. Bill Hesselmar, an allergist at the University of Gothenburg Department of Pediatrics.

The researchers said they suspect that hand-washing dishes doesn’t get them as clean as the dishwasher does, which is actually a good thing because it can help protect against allergies (Read More)