This definitely falls into the "Random thoughts" section of my blog, but I figured I would post it here because I'm sure many people are wondering the same thing...
Recently my wife and I noticed that all of our glasses are coming out of the dishwasher with a white residue on them. You can wipe it...it doesn't come off. You can re-wash dishes...it doesn't come off.
This residue started appearing all of a sudden. I checked the dishwasher for clogs, and there were none. I checked that water was spraying properly during the wash and rinse cycles. It was. What the hell???
I started to think it had something to do with our well water because we had a bad drought in New York this summer and I thought maybe it changed the chemistry of the water or something. I was just about to call in the well company to test it (at great expense!) when I saw the reason for this situation on the news.
All dishwasher detergent manufacturers in the U.S. were required to remove phosphates from their detergents in July, 2010 (which is right around when our problem showed up). You can read about it on this link at the Cascade web site.
I checked this out and learned that the absence of phosphates in the dishwasher detergent is what's causing the white clouding on the glasses. I don't yet know what can be done about it to get (and keep!) the white film off the glasses, but at least I know it's not a problem with the water or the dishwasher.
Good luck with this one! I think we'll have to wait until the manufacturers come up with some equivalent natural ingredient to phosphates to get the dishes to come out without this film.
Moral of the story: Don't call a repairman. Your dishwasher is not broken...
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