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Dry cleaning is Big Business in developed nations around the world.
According to Proctor and Gamble, the average woman spends about $1500 per year on dry cleaning thanks to the pink tax. (1)
Even more surprising, 65% of clothes that are dry cleaned are actually machine washable!
Most folks don’t give a second thought to how their clothes are dry cleaned or what chemicals are used. The overwhelming majority of dry cleaning businesses use perchloroethylene (PERC), a solvent and probable carcinogen.
Dry cleaners love PERC because it cleans delicate fabrics without shrinking or fading.
PERC lingers on clothes hours or even days after the customer has taken the dry cleaned clothes home. The practice of enclosing the dry cleaned garments in plastic further encourages retention of residual PERC in the clothing fibers.
Vapors are then released into the air of your home when you remove the plastic and put the clothes into your closet.
You can be breathing PERC vapors in your bedroom while you are sleeping and not even know it!
Short term symptoms of breathing PERC vapors include dizziness, fatigue, headache, and sweating. Lack of coordination and unconsciousness are also possible.
Long term exposure to PERC vapors can cause kidney and liver damage and potentially cancer as well. (2)
PERC has a very strong and fresh smelling scent. You’ve probably gotten a whiff of it before when pulling the plastic off your dry cleaned clothes. Once evaporated, PERC can’t be detected by smell, so don’t trust your nose that it is gone.
Reduce Your Exposure to PERC
The first and most obvious way to cut your exposure to PERC is to dry clean fewer clothes. Given that 65% of the clothes dry cleaned by the average woman could, in fact, be machine washed provides ample room for an immediate and significant reduction in exposure.
A second way to cut your exposure to PERC is to unwrap your dry cleaned clothes outside and let them hang in the fresh air or garage for a few hours before bringing them inside and hanging them in your closet.
Unwrapping them in the house is NOT a good idea, as vapors will be released and can linger for up to a week!
You will also want to be sure to check with the local health department on PERC levels in the air if you work or live in a building where a dry cleaner operates. PERC has been known to seep into nearby apartments and offices and contaminate the air.
Why Not Eliminate Exposure Altogether?
In recent years, “green” dry cleaning services have popped up across the country. In my metro area alone, there are at least 3 such businesses.
Eco-friendly dry cleaners use liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) to clean garments and such a process leaves no chemical residue that can harm the customer.
Our family switched to a green dry cleaning service as soon as one opened in our area a few years ago and have been extremely happy with the results, not to mention the peace of mind knowing that no PERC vapors are floating around our home.
Green dry cleaning is a bit more expensive than a regular dry cleaner, but preserving one’s health, in the long run, is no doubt the more economical option considering skyrocketing medical costs!
As suggested by Joel Salatin, the grass-based farmer featured in the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, if you think switching to an eco-friendly dry cleaning business in your community is expensive, “have you priced cancer lately?”
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Excellent closing line!! Your timing is uncanny. Just yesterday I was debating on whether to dry clean or wash a new shirt of my husbands. It was silk and the label said either or but cry cleaning was best. Deciding I preferred to take the chances with how it would turn out rather than have chemicals on my skin I washed it. After all, silkworms get wet. I live in your area, where is a "green" dry cleaning service?
Hi Paula, the dry cleaning chain "Martinizing" has a green dry cleaning process. I think this chain is actually nationwide in the USA.
This is an easy-peasy one for me! I have nothing that needs to be dry-cleaned! I get most of my clothing at Goodwill or thrift stores and I make sure that everything is hand or machine wash only. Dry cleaning can be so expensive…and when I only pay $3 for a sweater, why would I want to spend $5 or more to get it dry cleaned?
I love Salatin's quote and have it on my blog's sidebar.
Sarah…I get SO much out of your posts and your little video clips! Your blog has become one of my favorites!
Cindy
Really? $1500 – that's absoultely incredible!!! I have never taken a thing to the dry cleaners. Maybe I'm just dirty – but no PERCs for me!!
Any tips on determining which dry-clean clothes can be machine washed? I've ruined clothes doing that before.
The $1500 figure shocked me too.
Regarding what you can machine wash, read the tag .. if it says "dry clean only", then you should take to a green dry cleaner to avoid PERC exposure. Some of my clothes day "machine wash or dry clean", so for those, I wash them on delicate cycle.
I wanted to contact you about the Solvair Cleaning System (Solvair), which may be of interest to you and your readers.
Solvair is a new option for consumers that represents a major scientific breakthrough in dry cleaning; an eco-friendly clothing care technology that truly works. As a system, it has been purposely designed to ensure that both superior cleaning results and good environmental practices are built into the system.
Solvair cleans clothes with a biodegradable cleaning fluid, conceptually similar to water and detergent in your home washer. Instead of drying clothes with heated air, like traditional dry cleaning or a home dryer, Solvair uses a unique cold liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) drying process.
Every aspect of the technology was engineered with environmental, worker and consumer safety in mind. For more information please visit http://www.solvaircleaning.com.
Thank you,
Ashley Bower
Marketing & Communications Manager
Solvair LLC
Thank you, Ashley, for taking the time to inform us about this eco dry cleaning process.
If you have a good (and, living in Europe, I would say German = less water, less liquid, great results. I adore my Miele) washing machine you can wash almost everything on the wool program with the spin on minimum (400) or the silk program; this is sometimes better than handwashing which can be rough (no wringing, wrap in a towel only!). Make it cold if the colours are strong and might run. Dry flat if it might stretch out of shape. Use a gentle natural soap on stains beforehand and rinse out before washing (many fragile washes are so gentle they will not get rid of an excess of soap). I do all my fragiles like that and I have a lot of silks/jerseys. Even unlined silk jackets can easily be washed at home. We still send my husband’s suits to the dry-cleaners but he doesn’t need to wear one everyday anymore and for me the odd jacket but it can’t be anywhere near 200$/year. If it doesn’t survive the washing machine I resign myself to the fact it wasn’t made for me…
I never get anything dry cleaned and usually just say f*** it and hand wash or gentle cycle at the least. But… I have this wool peacoat that I love and I would be very angry at myself if I ruined it. How do I find a good Eco cleaner? Are there questions I should ask to make sure they are truly leaving those harmful chemicals out?? I typed a search into yelp and a bunch of places came up but how do I make sure they are truly green and safe?
Following.
I have one denim black jacket and my dad mistakenly threw vegetable oil on it and now it smells bad. Will the bad smell be removed by dry cleaning and will the colour fade?
I have been dry cleaner for 27 years. I have always worked with perc. I am a very healthy person I rarely c doctors. I have healthy children. All this about using perc is dangerous is lots of rubbish. Ppl who telling u this probably getting paid my the new dry cleaning green earth rubbish. Why nobody came up with all this rubbish about perc before the green earth n wet cleaning come up in the markets. ? U didn’t care about ppl heath all these years now how u worried about ppl Heath. I think go do something more useful than talk nonsense
So glad you are well! Many people cannot handle exposure to perc though! Best to find and use a green dry cleaners that does not use this chemical.