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	Advertisers love exploiting fears. A key brand positioning tactic is to magnify a problem and then present your product as the solution. And that’s exactly what seems to be happening here. Calgon claims that limescale makes washing machines break down and die early, and that its tablets make them ‘live longer’ by preventing this alleged cause of premature death. But this hinges on a shaky premise: does limescale really shorten the life of your washing machine? After simulating three years of washing in hard water, but otherwise normal conditions of three loads a week at 40°C, we asked an expert with 17 years’ experience to inspect our washing machines for damage. Calgon kept the inner parts spotless, but the thin layer of limescale that had built up without it wasn’t enough to affect performance. Our expert believes that it would take six to eight years of washing in particularly hard water before a machine would need attention for limescale build up. Plus, not even this would necessarily lead to the washing machine breaking down. And by this point you’d have spent £295 on Calgon tablets – enough to buy yourself a new machine. http://conversation.which.co.uk/ener...e-live-longer/