Home > Fashion & Gear

Laundering the Dirty Business of Dry Cleaning

Photo: istockphoto.com/Frances Twitty
Victoria Everman

Pasta sauce, wine, toothpaste -- no matter what you get on your favourite white shirt, a dry cleaner can get it out. With such strong stain-fighting power, have you ever wondered just how safe those chemicals are? Pretty hazardous actually, but there are alternatives. To find the best dry & wet cleaners in Canada making a conscious effort to be green, head to the Services category in the Green Living Guides.

Unsafe hydrocarbons
The main solvent used in dry cleaning is called perchloroethylene, also known as PERC. While commonly known as a cleaning agent, it is also used as a metal degreaser and appears in consumer paint strippers. It's a chemical heavily regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) due to environmental concerns.

A manufactured chlorinated hydrocarbon, PERC is a known hazardous air pollutant linked to increased risks of certain cancers. Other possible side effects include skin, eye, nose and throat irritation; reduced fertility; headache; dizziness and nausea.

Dry cleaning employees suffer the most with severe reactions but there has also been documented minor, long-term irritation in customers who use dry cleaning regularly. By simply bringing clothing home from being cleaned, you release PERC into the air, making your indoor air all the more toxic. Runoff from dry cleaning businesses has also resulted in PERC mixing in with local water sources, but so far not much contamination has been linked to this.

Cleaner choices
A few less toxic options are available to consumers. One of the most widely used alternatives is GreenEarth, which uses a silicone-based solvent that carries detergent to the clothes and rinses away trapped dirt and oil. No chemicals are brought to the clothing. Colours stay vibrant and the fabric remains soft with little wrinkling.

After many local and regional awards, the company was presented with the EPA Environmental Achievement Award for all their hard work. Big names like General Electric and Proctor & Gamble recently partnered with GreenEarth to help make this new cleaning option available worldwide.

The other two commonly mentioned eco-conscious options are liquid carbon dioxide (used in high-pressure cleaning machines) and wet cleaning using regular water in computer-controlled washing machines. According to a study done by Consumer Reports, both the liquid carbon dioxide and GreenEarth recently proved to be more effective in cleaning clothes as well as more enviro-friendly than traditional dry cleaning. In the same experiment, wet cleaning did not fair so well and hasn't become very popular among businesses or consumers.

Substitute solutions
Green dry cleaners are still difficult to find. The Canadian Centre for Pollution Prevention is working with Environment Canada on the Green Dry Cleaners Survey, a project to expand the existing green dry cleaners network in Canada. They have an interactive map to help you find a green dry cleaner in your area. GreenEarth also has a listing of their cleaners for both Canada and the USA.

Just down on your laundry
No matter what method you use to clean your clothing, reducing the number of times you do the wash will help preserve our planet's resources. Consumer Reports suggests the following two tips:

  • Hang up clothes immediately after you've worn them, give them a day off between wearings, and air them out before returning them to the closet. Use a clothes brush occasionally to remove surface dust.
  • Treat spills quickly to prevent staining. And don't iron stained garments; heat sets stains.

    • by Victoria Everman, freelance writer, model, on-camera personality and founder of the San Francisco Craft Mafia.

    Comments

    I have recently discovered that fabric softeners work because of their "coloidial" content which as I understand it are amino acids, in other words tallow or animal fat. I am not a chemist and have not managed to track down the origins of these so called amino aacids, can anyone enlighten me please?
    Submitted by ekath (guest) on Sat, 05/30/2009 - 09:24.
    Just think about all the toxins and toxic chemicals that overtime can harm you, if there are no studies to prove it now...eventually they'll have studies...when people start dying from it more often and the media gets involved. We've trashed our enviornment and blamed it on industrail factories. Well the only people we should blame is ourselves. According to some European countries, they ban the use of certain toxic chemicals in our everyday prodicts. But Canada still finds it not enough usage to harm you...that's not the point. The point is it does harm you. whether its a little...or alot...eventually it will. If you can, stay away...or even limit the use!!!
    Submitted by Anonymous (guest) on Fri, 03/13/2009 - 16:27.
    Microwave popcorn is a health risk for crying out loud. Diacetyl to give it that rich, buttery flavour you know and love. Keep inhaling that and you'll be like the peeps who manufacture it (lung cancer)
    Submitted by Anonymous (guest) on Sun, 01/25/2009 - 22:13.
    There is no fear mongering, just simple facts. The US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health found heightened rates of mortality and cancer in dry cleaner employees. Over 90% of dry cleaners use Perc. So if you work at a dry cleaners, they probably use Perc, and you're more likely to get cancer and die younger. Perc is a suspected human carcinogen and linked to several types of cancer. It is also classified Toxic to the Environment by Environment Canada. GreenEarth uses the same non-toxic silicone found as a base ingrediant in virtually every hand and body lotion. The detergents used with GreenEarth are not toxic and to suggest so is incredibility misleading. The Canadian Environment Department considered studying silicone but recently has decided there was no need to, either way it has nothing to do with dry cleaning as silicone is used widely by almost every industry. GreenEarth is also the first dry cleaning process that is not carbon based, unlike Perc or Petroleum Hydrocarbon which are both carbon based. Infact Petroleum Hydrocarbon is advertised as Organic dry cleaning or Environmentally Friendly Dry Cleaning even though it is toxic and the biggest manfacturer is Exxon.
    Submitted by Anonymous (guest) on Thu, 01/22/2009 - 18:27.

    Please stop the fear mongering!
    Dry cleaning even in PERC is safe to workers and consumers if done correctly. There is no study that shows that dry cleaning workers "suffer" from anything related to PERC usage.

    As for the silicone process GreenEarth, the product itself is based on a "chemical" currently under study in its use as a dry cleaning solvent. It is however a "chemical" that has many doubts as to its safety, danger and environmental impact. The "detergents" used with the process contain toxic chemicals also. How can a chemical such as cyclic silicone oil combined with toxic additives pretend to be "less toxic"?

    The Canadian Environmental Department is currently studying silicone for possible interdiction in the country.

    Although each alternative has both good aspects and bad, dry cleaning clothing is not a "health risk" that requires all this hysteria and propaganda.

    Submitted by Anonymous (guest) on Fri, 01/09/2009 - 15:43.

    just thinks about the future and your health as well

    Submitted by Anonymous (guest) on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 01:53.

    Post new comment

    The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

    Copyright © 2010 of Green Living Enterprises, a division of Key Publishers Company Ltd. All rights reserved.

    Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. GREEN LIVING is a trade-mark of Key Publishers Company Ltd.