Table 1.

Reports on the survival of microorganisms on hospital textiles after laundering.

Described laundering conditions	Added disinfection agent or bleach	Surviving microorganism	Reference
10 min at 60 °C	No	Enterococcus faecium	Wilcox & Jones, 1995 [10]
10 min at 60 °C or 3 min at 71 °C	No	Certain strains of Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium	Orr et al. 2002 [11]
less than 10 min at 60 °C	3 mL Peroxyacetic acid/ kg textiles	Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter aerogenes	Fijan et al. 2007 [12]
20 min at 30 °C	10 mL Sodium hypochlorate/kg textiles or 12.5 mL peroxyacetic acid/kg textiles	Enterococcus faecium and Enterobacter aerogenes	Fijan et al. 2010 [13]
43 min at 30 °C	10 mL Sodium hypochlorate/kg textiles	Enterococcus faecium
13 min at 49 °C	Added chlorine bleach (without specifications)	Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiella pneumoniae	Walter et al. 1975 [15]
66 °C	Added chlorine bleach cycle (without specifications)	Staphylococci, Klebsiella, and Enterobacter species	Smith et al. 1987 [16]
8 min at 47.8 °C	0.58 Chlorine bleach/kg	Predominantly aerobic bacteria, staphylococci and total coliforms	Christian et al. 1983 [17]
77.2 °C	0.11 Chlorine bleach/kg
22.2 °C	Low temperature bleach (without specifications)	Predominantly Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonadaceae and Staphylococcus species	Blaser et al. 1984 [7]
71.1 °C	High temperature bleach (without specifications)
Typical program for hospital bed linen	50 ppm Chlorine, 54 ppm peracid, 100 ppm peroxid	Clostridium difficile spores	Hellickson & Owens, 2007 [18]