Things like scrubs exchange machines and central laundries washing staff gear is rare even in hospitals in the developed world.

Short cycle length certainly makes sense to be correlated with pathogens. The lousy LG "TurboWash" only takes 28 minutes to do a full load of laundry but certainly doesn't get very much clean in that time.

I have to admit it was surprising that textiles have been identified as the source of hospital acquired infections. You'd think that even if the laundering didn't eliminate pathogens, it would greatly reduce them and make any clusters more diffuse.

> Two commonly used UK washing detergents were selected for the assay: a non-biological liquid detergent (15-30%:Anionic surfactants; 5-15%:nonionic surfactants; <5%:phosphonate, perfume, soap, optical brighteners, methylisothiazolinone, octylisothiazolinone) and a non-biological powder detergent (5-15%: oxygen-based bleaching agents, anionic surfactants; <5%: nonionic surfactants, polycarboxylates, soap, perfume, phosphonates, optical brighteners, zeolites)

This doesn't really mean anything to me, but maybe it means something to you?

In some sense I think the real takeaway from the study is "we shouldn't be having healthcare workers wash their own patient/pathogen facing uniforms", and that takeaway seems robust against the hypothesis that only some detergents would solve the problem. As a population we can be sure that some of the healthcare workers are going to use the detergents that don't solve the problem.

But my state has also made it illegal to prohibit the use of clotheslines, a "right to dry" law.