Mold in dishwasher -- landlord says it's safe?

[mustang51]

The previous tenant of my apartment left the dishwasher in incredibly bad shape. When I arrived and opened the dishwasher, there were thousands of little mini-worms crawling around. After running a few cycles, the worms were gone, but black mold residue remains on the dishwasher racks.

We tried running various different cleaners and concentrates through the dishwasher, but most of the mold residue still remains. My landlord (it's an office) claims that this residue is "harmless because it has already ran through the dishwasher cycle", but just by touching it, it easily comes off on my fingers and will certainly come onto my plates and food. They recommended just scrubbing it off with a paper towel.

After a week of going back and forth with them, I recently just gave them one of the racks as they said they will clean it themselves (they will almost certainly just rub it with a paper towel). The top rack doesn't come off and there's still black mold residue on it, but the office says "nahh it's just a little bit, you will be fine".

1) Is this safe?

2) What are my options for effectively cleaning it?

3) Is the office responsible for fixing this, and should I ask them for a written letter saying that this dishwasher is now safe to use?

Thank you for your help.

[kurt]

Just wipe it off. Run the DW with a 1/4 cup of bleach.

The landlords sound like dirtbags. They should be the one's cleaning it for you, but if we're just talking safety and cleanliness, clean it yourself. They've already proven themselves worthless A-holes.

[mustang51]

I'm worried that I'll miss certain spots and it will come onto the plates. What if some remains after the bleach wash? Is this really sanitary? Can I call a health-inspector authority?

[Rocon]

Kurt's sugestion is sound, it is most likely clean now. You could run a second wash with a strong sollution of vinegar to try to eliminate the staining.

[kurt]

Yes, you can call a health inspector-authority. They will probably provide useless boiler plate advice.

Wipe it off. Pay attention, get all the spots.

If there's a spot on a dish, what do you think it's going to do to you? Quit freaking out. You're breathing some mold now, you've consumed some in every thing you've eaten in the last 24 hours, and you're going to do the same thing tomorrow.

Just clean it.

Or, listen to the loons that will insist it's going to kill you, pay them thousands of dollars, and have marginally trained morons wiping down your dishwasher in the same manner you could do in about 3 minutes.

[Bill Kibbel]

My Grandma, or my Mom, would have had it looking showroom new in the amount of time it took to write the post. Back-in-the-day most folks just did what they saw had to be done, whether it was supposed to be their job or not.

It makes me think - I should just do what I need to do and not bitch about what others aren't doing.

[Mike Lamb]

Dishwashers get dirty and moldy. I have cleaned mine every couple of years. Clorox Clean-Up and a rag works well. Bleach works wonders.

http://www.wikihow.com/Clean-and-Maintain-a-Dishwasher has pictures as to how to use a rag and other tools for cleaning. Good luck. Show us some pictures. I am terribly interested.

[Nolan Kienitz]

And to think I just spent ~4 hours yesterday emptying our side-by-side refrigerator/freezer.

This also included removing all the trays and bins and giving it a thorough scrubbing as well as turning it off, laying it on its side, removing the bottom and rear access panels so I could vacuum and thoroughly clean the coils of 8+ years of collected lint, dog hair and such.

The clue was the wet/stale dog hair smell that was wafting through the kitchen when the fan was running. DUH!!

Well ... it is clean now and the foodstuffs with excessive freezer burn is now in the trash.

Back to basics ... [^]