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.