Dangers of Dry Cleaning: Is Dry Cleaning Bad for Your Health?

How the clothes that are dropped off at the dry cleaners get cleaned is a mystery to most, but it's also one less burden with which we have to contend. The clothes come back spotless and fresh, the charge is fairly cheap, off we go, and we are happy. The problem is that most of us have never been educated on the dangers involved in the process of dry-cleaning.

If we understood the process of dry cleaning, then it is likely that we would question why the process is anything other than dry. It is a wet process where stain removing agents are added to a machine that looks pretty much just like a washing machine. The catch is that it is called dry cleaning because the cleaning agents are not water soluble. The cleaning agent will evaporate into your clothing, hence preparing to remove the spots and stains. Then it goes through the washing process and removes all of the unwanted soil but here's the catch, what it does not remove is the original cleaning solvent and that is where the problem comes in.

Perchloroethylene is the cleaning agent that is most commonly used in the dry cleaning process. It evaporates very fast, the smell is very strong, it evaporates quickly, looks like water but has a consistency much like gasoline. Now the Environmental Protection Agency has stepped in and has a lot to say about Perchloroethylene and the effects of it, especially over prolonged periods of time. Long term exposure can cause kidney and liver damage and has been proven in laboratories to cause cancer in animals.

Even with the attempted interception from the EPA, dry cleaners all around are still using Perchloroethylene because it is so effective. EPA is claiming that even if another business is within the same parameter of dry cleaners that uses this chemical, they too could be at risk. Now if the dry cleaners are using state of the art equipment which is normally airtight and does not allow the vapors to escape into the air, any risks would be minimal but the problem is that they do not use the new machines because they are extremely expensive.