Are You Worried That Dry Cleaners Will Cause Clothes To Be Poisoned?

Recently, there have been many media exposing the "black curtain" of the laundry industry, which involves fraud, price is reasonable, and also mentioned that "dry cleaning agent is toxic chemical products, four vinyl chloride". So many people are cleaning by dry cleaning agents. clothes The question of whether or not to bring poison is very questionable, which can be discussed from a scientific point of view.

What is dry cleaning?

Dry cleaning is relative to the concept of water washing. Most of our daily cleaning is carried out by water as solvent, while dry cleaning is using organic solvents instead of water to clean fabrics.

If the stains on the fabric are classified according to their solubility, they can be roughly divided into two categories: fat soluble and water-soluble. Most of the stains, especially those that are difficult to clean up, such as blood, milk stains and oil stains, are all fat soluble substances. They are not easy to combine with water, and the conventional washing process is poor in cleaning ability. Fat soluble Strong organic solvents are easier to clean. This is the reason why the early working people thought of washing kerosene oil with kerosene.

Another advantage of using organic solvents is that they are less damaging to certain fabrics than water. In addition, organic solvents can kill more microorganisms in the process of cleaning.

Four is vinyl chloride the dry cleaner that should not be used?

The key indicators to choose which organic solvents are the ability to dissolve fat soluble substances, the damage degree of dry cleaners to fibers and chromaticity, their bactericidal power, and the cost and toxicity of dry cleaners.

Compared to kerosene, gasoline and other petroleum hydrocarbon solvents, four vinyl chloride is really toxic, but because of its obvious advantages in all other aspects, more than 60 years ago, four vinyl chloride confirmed its position in the dry cleaning industry, so far no one has shaken it.

Steps of dry cleaning

In fact, consumers do not need to worry about safety. adopt dry cleaning The dose of four vinyl chloride exposed to clothing is extremely limited, which is far from enough to cause symptoms such as allergies and anaesthesia. It will not cause hepatotoxicity, carcinogenesis and other long-term toxicity. This can be seen from the steps of dry cleaning.

Dry cleaning of clothes can be roughly divided into three steps.

1. soak the clothes in the solvent, make the stain fully contact with the solvent by rolling, and be carried away from the fabric (in the wash, because most stains are insoluble in water, this process requires the aid of detergent).

2. centrifugation to remove dry cleaners (because there is no need to add detergents, there is no washing rinse step).

3. heating further removes the dry cleaning agent on the fabric (the volatile organic solvent is stronger than water, which is easy to remove from the fabric. However, the drying process will raise the temperature to 80 degrees Celsius and stay for 15 minutes, so as to ensure that the dry cleaner is removed).

If consumers are still not comfortable with clothes that have undergone such harsh drying processes, you can also dry clothes that have just been retrieved from the dry cleaners for one or two days and then return to the cupboards. The amount of residual four chloroethylene in dry cleaned fabric is also very low by using the most sophisticated instrumental analysis method. If placed for a few days, even if there is no ventilation, the remaining four vinyl chloride can not be detected. Consumers do not need to worry about their own safety. What really needs to worry is the environment of the dry cleaners and the operators there. Relatively speaking, the use of fully enclosed dry cleaning machine can recover four vinyl chloride distilled from the drying process, which not only saves costs, but also protects employees and environment.

Tips for laundry:

1. not all clothing is suitable for dry cleaning. It should follow the washing instruction on clothes.

2. after the dry cleaning clothes are retrieved, they can be placed in the ventilating place for 2-3 days. The residue of dry cleaners can be as low as possible.

3. polyester fabric has a slightly stronger retention of four vinyl chloride. It is recommended that water should be washed, such as dry cleaning.