Stuff You Should Know - Dry Cleaning: Not Really Dry(!)

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

Dry cleaning is one of those things that we’re all familiar with but don’t actually know much about. That will hold true no more! Learn about all the ins and outs of the dry cleaning biz, some of its toxic secrets, and some spot removal tips too!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. We are ready to Martinize the heck out of you in one hour or less. Yeah, you like heavy starch? You medium guy? You want a double crease in your pant length? I had to look that up. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Yeah, I got a triple crease, what are you talking about? No, for real, have you heard of a double crease before?

A demand to know. I don't think so, because I'm not someone who often uses a dry cleaner. You and a lot of people these days pal apparently the pandemic just crushed dry cleaning because people stopped going to the office as much, which means that they stopped needing clothes that required dry cleaning as much. But even before that, people had started to work from home a little more and the office had gone much more casual than before. So dry cleaners have been hurting for a while. Yeah, I just, I don't have much of a need. If there's a particular stain or something

that I'm really dying to get out of a piece of clothing, I'll take it into a dry cleaner. But I was taught at a very young age how to launder an iron clothing. Oh, no. But I also don't often have to do that because I rarely have to wear like, you know, a pressed dress shirt to a thing. You don't put a double crease in your jeans? Yeah, what's a double crease? So I looked it up. It strikes me as possibly kind of like a 1940s,

you know, that wall from the cartoons kind of suit, suit, look. Okay. Maybe those would have double creases. The only thing I could find, there's a pair of Benaton pants for women that has a double crease. And I'm pretty sure I could find the second one, not 100%. But I guess that's the thing that some people requested the dry cleaners. Hmm. People who ain't quite right.

I take it. Yeah, my big dry cleaning sort of memory and story is that... You have a dry cleaning story? Well, not a story, but I just, you know, my best friend in high school rad who the cartographer, hello rad, he, his dad, Wayne Wayne had a closet with like 25 light blue perfectly dry clean shirts like 25 pinklands 25 white ones It was like a Patrick Bateman-esque closet. Yeah, and I remember just going in there in high school and just being like wow

Where they're like leather gloves and a knife stashed behind all this. No Wayne was a good guy, but anyway That's my dry cleaning memory from high school. I have it. I have a stat here that's From 2017 there were in the United States. There were 20,600 dry cleaners. I've seen that as high as 30,000 now Yeah, but one thing I wanted to point out is that dry cleaners in the United States, 80% of their employees slash owners are ethnic minorities of the United States, and majority of which are Korean Americans. And all this just to point out as we go along, we're going to talk about the expense of dry cleaning and changing your whole business because of government regulations and the fact that these ethnic minorities and small business owners that can be a tough thing. Yeah, I mean there's definitely

like a stereotype in the United States that that dry cleaners are often owned by people of Korean descent or straight up Korean immigrants and apparently apparently in the 70s, that became a thing. In the same way that we talked about Greek immigrants and their children running diners in the United States. That's true with Korean immigrants and dry cleaners. Apparently, a Korean immigrant is 34 times likelier than the immigrant from anywhere else to open a dry cleaning store in the United States. And yeah, these are very small operations in a lot of cases, they're small businesses. And yeah, as we'll see, there's a lot of financial pressure on them right now that seems potentially fairly unfair. Yeah, absolutely. And we're going to sort of go through the process of dry cleaning.

We've got a lot of requests for this over the years. My experience has been, at least around here, most of the dry cleaners are storefronts that will take your stuff. There are a lot of washers and dryers like you can do laundry on site, but the stuff is sent out. It is not cleaned on site. It goes to a separate facility for the dry cleaning, then comes back. on site. It goes to a separate facility for the dry cleaning then comes back. It's on those amazing racks that I just I love those things so much. Yeah. That's been around. You know, all those clothes spinning around. Can you just imagine like a ham hanging from each one and your kitchen? I just for some reason I love it, but apparently there are somewhere in the, they actually do the stuff on site.

But the first thing we want to talk about is the fact that dry cleaning is not dry. It just means they don't use water. That's a really important point. And I think we'll probably restate it multiple times throughout this episode just to make sure we're driving at home. Do we need to, though? Yes, we do. Whether we need to or not, I insist. Let's just camera that simplistic fact home. Yeah, it is weird. I think it's just kind of a remnant or a relic of the original interpretation of dry cleaning because it did make sense back in the day.

Today, it doesn't hold up. It's not dry at all. So everybody, I'm sorry to ruin your illusions. Technically, it was Chuck who did that. But dry cleaning is fairly old. There was a man, a black American named Thomas Jennings, who was a tailor in New York City, who in 1821 got a patent for a process of essentially dry cleaning. He called it dry scouring,

that you could use to remove dirt and grease from clothing without harming the fabric, which is pretty groundbreaking, but it's lost to history. Apparently there was a fire, I wanna do at least a short stuff on this chuck. There was a fire in 1836 that destroyed 10,000 patents, basically all the patents from 1790 to 1836 that destroyed 10,000 patents, basically all the patents from 1790 to 1836 gone in this fire. And that included Thomas Jennings' patents. So we're not, it all sure exactly what the

deal was. But we know that he was the first to come up with probably what would be considered dry cleaning. Yeah. And Jennings himself could be a great short stuff because he is the first African-American to receive a patent in the United States. And this was 40 years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. And what's so remarkable about that is, is he was born a free man, but in the patent application, you have to be a citizen of the United States. And they granted him that patent thus recognizing him as a citizen of the United States, which was a very big

deal at the time. He also helped to organize something called the Legal Rights Association. Again, this is the 1820s, 1830s, and that group would challenge people in court with file lawsuits against acts of discrimination in the 1830s. So that yeah, he definitely does deserve his own episode. It sounds like two. Follow up. Okay, a couple of decades later over in France, there is a man named Jean-Baptiste Joli France, there is a man named Jean-Baptiste Joli. Spelled like Joli, it's a great name. All three names together with that nice round Baptiste in the middle. He made dye, he was a dire maker.

And he had a tablecloth that was, had an oil lamp knocked over on it. Luckily, it was probably not lit at the time where else would have been a totally different story. But the flammable liquid inside probably camphine, which is kind of like, it's derived from the same stuff that Turbantine has made from. He found that where it had spilled kind of like cleaned his tablecloth. And he said, you know what? I think I might be on to something here. Yeah, because that is, we sort of buried the lead.

It's not dry cleaning because there is liquid, but what the liquids are and always have been is some kind of solvent to clean your clothes. Yeah. Early solvents were very dangerous and flammable. Sometimes it was caracene, sometimes it was gasoline. Yeah, I remember, I think it was, was it the Vesilla X murder episode where the rugs were super flammable because they had been cleaned with gas. I don't remember that. I think that was it because I know at some point we talked about the fact that gasoline was used to clean stuff and that's why one of these houses like went up and flame so

quickly. It might have been the inter-k-fake murders. Oh, was that a fire? Oh, no, I bet it was the solder children, the missing solder children. There was a fire central to that one. Okay, that may have been it. But I knew we talked about it at some point. They used, you know, like we said, kerosene, gasoline, turpentine, the resin of which is a turpine. And that is why when you go camping, you look for what's called like a lighters knot or fat lighter. And that is the very resinous interior of a pine tree, which is super flammable. And that really helps get a fire started. But all this to say, is that stuff was pretty dangerous to use as a close cleaner? Yeah, so much so that dry cleaners would explode from time to time. So that dry cleaning facility that the storefronts would send their clothes to would be located

on the outskirts of town because it was a very, very dangerous place. And after they started to move away from more flammable solvents, they replaced them with synthetic compounds, specifically carbon tetra chloride and trichlor ethylene, which worked, I think, the reason that people were kind of bullish on them is because they didn't blow up, but there were a lot of other problems with them. Like just as an industry, the carbon tetrachloride corroded your machinery, the trichlorothylene was really harsh on your clothes, and both of them would give you cancer in disruptor neurological system too. Yeah, for sure. Before they tried these, they tried a kind of mineral spirit called

Stoddard Solvitt, which I think that may have been flammable to. Yeah. But where they eventually landed is on something called perchloroethylene, or perch, is that we're going to call it, is everybody calls it? Is it per chloro? Yeah, sure is. P-E-R-C. And that became sort of the go-to for a long, long time. It still was the go-to percentage wise, and we'll get to all that later. But it was much safer to use.

It did a better job of cleaning. The equipment was smaller. It was kind of better in every way as far as those previous alternatives that as we'll see it ate so great. One other thing that was so alluring about it is those dry cleaning facilities could come back into town now and your little storefront could actually be the dry cleaning facility because it required such less floor space. And this solvent was just like a miracle. Like you could get people's clothes done in an hour. And actually it was the guy who started one hour martinizing, who was a chemist,

who was the one who went back and was studying perchloroethylene as a potential solvent, and brought it into the dry cleaning industry and started one hour Martinizing shops and the reason they could do it in an hour if you paid them enough was because they had the facilities on site Yeah, and his name was Gabby Johnson I don't think so no was it something Martin. Yes, okay. I can't remember his first name, but his last name was definitely Martin Because Johnsonizing just sounds dirty It really does Gonna go out and Johnsonize it really does

Yeah, I'm like I'm blushing right now. So like I said, we're gonna talk more about the sort of the downsides of perk But even at the time when they're like hey, this is so much better and safer You're like, hey, this is so much better and safer. They're like, but geez, working in this thing all days, like, I'm like, my breathing is a little weird and my eyes are irritated. And I get a little bit dizzy and stuff like that. Does anyone else see the elves? Yeah, everyone's like, yeah, but it's not flammable.

Right. It's not turpentine or kerosene. So it's better. Yeah. Some of these things, I think perch chloroethylene is actually related in some way to chloroform. So, these early workers, especially before we had any kind of handle on just how bad perk actually is for you, we're handling this really tough stuff. And we'll definitely talk a lot more about perk later on. But the, well, should we take a break and then talk about what happens when you drop your closeoff at

a dry cleaning place? I think so. Okay. Well, everybody, we're going to take a break and then come back and talk about what happens when you drop your closeoff at a dry cleaning place. My name is Theo Henderson, hosting creator of the podcast called Wee-ian House. My lived experience in house-sitness is extensive. I was one of over 75,000 experiencing house-sitness on a given night in Los Angeles. Here's a simple truth. House-sitness is everywhere.

It affects over half a billion people in the United States alone. We, the in-house, will explore the sensitive strategy of displacement from the perspective of the in-house. On my podcast, we're going to cover far more of my story. We're going to debunk the myths around houselessness. We're going to remember and humanize the community who have passed by spotlighting houselessness remembrance day. More importantly, we're going to look at ways we criminalize in house. Because if you can demonize them, you can criminalize them.

Unlike the mainstream media's way of speaking over at Beyond House, my podcast centers their voices in the conversation. House Assistants is not a monolith. Listen to Weedian House, an I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everybody, it's Josh from Stuff You Should Know and get this, we'll be back on tour this January. On January 24th, we'll be in Seattle at the Paramount Theatre and the next day, January 25th,

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Bye. Bye. Bye. Yeah. Before the break, you sounded like John Wilson. Is that the guy who started one hour of Martinizing? No, have you seen John Wilson's TV show How To With John Wilson? I can't say that I have. That's great. I had a three season run and it's fantastic. Does he have glasses and kind of sandy blonde hair? He has glasses, but he's never seen on screen. Oh, no, I'm not sure who that is then. Yeah. No, sorry John Wilson. The show, but he also sort of talks like this as a narrator.

Oh, okay. Yeah, he sounds like my kind of guy. It's very fun. It's a great, it's one of my favorite shows. So highly recommended. But this is not about John Wilson. This is about, although he may do a show called, how to get your clothes clean, that's the kind of thing he does. Uh huh, sure. But when you drop your stuff off at a dry cleaner, and we'll kind of,

whiz bang through this first part, because it's certainly not super interesting, but they're gonna inspect your clothes. One reason and they're gonna do that is to see like where the lasagna stain is, or if it's not stained, if it's just a regular old, hey, I'm Wayne Smith and I want to get all my shirts perfect, they are going to go over it so they can cover their own butts as far as when people come back and say, hey, the buttons missing, they can say, sorry sir, or ma'am, your button was missing when it came in here because we wrote it down and showed you.

Yeah, just peep the sticker chump. Yeah. This is kind of what they're famous for saying. If they do find some stain that they're like, I don't know about this one, it could be tough. As we'll see, the different types of stain require different types of treatments, they'll pre-treat it, and then the dry cleaning takes place. This is where the magic happens. I really feel like this is some good stuff here.

That's right. So, here's what happens. Should we repeat the fact that it just means no water, your clothes are still getting wet? Yeah. Say it again. I just did. You want me to say it another time? Sure. All right, no water. That's all dry cleaning means. Yeah, it gets wet. Your clothes get super duper wet, soaked even, but not in water.

Instead, in an industrial synthetic solvent perk, the perk that we've talked about. Yeah, and they do this in huge machines. And these cleaning machines are not that different from just your garden variety, industrial wet laundry machine as far as I can tell. Yeah, but they're what's called dry to dry machines, meaning that the washer and the dryer are housed in the same machine. It's the same drum. You put the clothes in once, they get washed, they get dried in the same little drum, and

then you pull them out. Yeah, it happens. The cycles are much faster. There's all kinds of things that we'll talk about that make it different. But if you put it in there, it's still got a drum that's going to spin and jostle your clothes around, 20 to 100 pounds depending on how big the machine is. It is a stainless steel basket that's perforated for drainage and stuff like that. It's their super robust because perk is about 79% in fact heavier than water is.

So this stuff's heavy, it's all just super juiced up motors, heavy duty equipment. Yeah, and I mean, they shoot a lot of perk at this stuff. I think on the order of like 25 gallons an hour, they really Johnsonize the clothes with the perk. But what's cool, you said that there's a lot of differences between these industrial dry cleaning machines and like say an industrial washer dryer. And the key difference is that that perk, the solvent that you use as the cleaning agent,

it's recovered to the greatest extent possible. We've reached what are called fifth generation machines. First generation machine was a washer, and then over here was a dryer. And when you were dry cleaning something, you moved it from the washer to the dryer. You got perk everywhere, you got it all over yourself, you got it all over the floor,

and you wasted a lot of it. And some of the older machines, you would have to refill the perk that was used and recovered in this machine every couple of months. Now it's on the order of every couple of years. That's amazing. Yeah, because this perk doesn't really break down very much, and it stays a viable solvent for years and years and years, if you keep it in this closed system. It separates from water as well, right? Yes, because it's, again, it's 70% heavier in the water. Water floats on top of it. And most of these machines feature

a little mouse that comes along with a tiny little snow shovel who's very happy to move the water out of the way with its snow shovel and water skis. That's right. There are also things like carbon absorbers. There are inductive fans. They have these sensors that will lock everything if the perk level is too high, you can't even open it. So they got to get as much of that perk out of that thing before you open the door, which has made things

much, much safer. But again, Perk has some dirty secrets that we're going to reveal later on. But this thing is, you're looking to get clean solvent by pumping out that perk through a filtration system. And even though like you said, there's spraying a ton of that stuff in there. Yeah. Usually about 25 gallons a minute. So like, I think there'll be 200 gallons over like a eight minute cycle pumped in. And there's not 200 gallons of perk in there

at any one time. As new perk is coming in, the old perk that's gone through the close already and is clinging to dirt is filtered out, right? So this is like this constant process of new perk, old perk, new perk coming in, old perk going out through these filters and everything. And then when the cycle is done and all the perks spun out and it's been removed from the basket, they heat the basket to vaporize the remaining perk. And then that also gets captured because they run that through condenser coils to turn it back into liquid and put it back in the filtered perk reservoir.

It's a pretty astounding machine that the dry cleaners use for this stuff, but it's really, it's just impressive like this, the leaps and bounds that they've gone through to figure out how to maximize the lifetime of a perk molecule and minimize the chance that it will be lost. Yeah, for sure. Something I've done a lot of the past two days is watch dry cleaning videos. Oh, tell me you saw the one. Well, I don't know, what was the one?

It's called What Is Dry Cleaning? How does dry cleaning work on YouTube? Did you see that one? No, I watched a lot of similar ones. I love processes like this, so I can watch things like this and stay riveted. I thought it was genuinely interesting. And one thing this article points out

is that quality control can, you know, like how your clothes come out in the end, basically, it's not just like, you know, they got the the machine so that's what it does it's human beings. That are overseeing the stuff. And making sure that everything comes out exactly right. If they are you know if they're doing it the right way and I saw a lot of videos where they. Where owners and operators talked about how important it was to have humans. operators talked about how important it was to have humans inspecting each and everything that comes out and making sure it passes their rigorous standards.

Yeah, because if you don't keep your filters clean, I'm guessing after every cycle, essentially, that perks not going to get filtered as much. So you're going to be using dirty perks solvent, and that has a really terrible effect on clothes. It can make those dingy, right? It can make close dingy over time. Perk interacts with colors so it can actually strip the dye from some colors and then bring it into other colors in the next load. If you have a good dry cleaner, they're going to clean their filters frequently. And if you keep up with that, then yeah, the quality is going to be through the roof essentially. Absolutely. So if hopefully is going to be through the roof, essentially. Absolutely.

If, hopefully, your quality controls through the roof at your local dry cleaner, they're going to take that garment out and inspect it and then say, sometimes, well, you know what, the machine and the perk did not get all the stain out, but I think I can do this with my own two hands. This is called post cleaning spot removal, and that is just extra post cleaning processes that is done by a person to make sure that stain gets out. Yes, because in a drag cleaning facility, they have a whole array of solvents that are specifically for different types of stains.

Yeah. And apparently you can divide two stains into two general camps. You've got wet type stains, which are wet in nature like a tea wine, something like that. You have dry side stains, which are typically grease or oil-based rather than water-based. And depending on those, you need either a solvent for the dry type stains or some sort of water solution, usually with enzymes like shout or something like that, for the wet type stains. And depending on that type of stain,

they'll use a specific kind of solvent in the post-bottling or the pre-spotting. But that's why it's really important. If you take your clothes to the dry cleaner, don't just throw the shirt at them and be like, peace, I'll see you at five. Like say, there's this tea stain right here that I just find too stubborn to even begin with. I can't even bother with it. But can you please get this tea stain out and they'll say, yes, you know, that's a wet side stain.

You'll say, I don't care. Just get the stain out and then you leave and say, peace, I'll see you at five. But at least you've told them very rudely, you've told them about that stain and they'll treat it accordingly. Yeah. As far as you yourself pre-treating a stain, you know, if you ask your dry cleaner, they're probably going to say that could make it worse, don't bother, or it doesn't do anything, don't bother. I mean, there are various sort of home recipes that you will find on the internet if you've spilled things like wine. There's a lot out there.

There's a lot of them. So I don't know, I'm not gonna give advice either way on that because I think sometimes that could help, but I don't know enough about it. It also could make the stain worse. So I'm not gonna, I'm gonna say, you know, you're on your own. I found a short article on the internet check that was by the Smithsonian's preservationists

about how to remove stains. I'm like, okay, I'm pretty sure these people know how to remove old stains. So I would go with whatever advice they're giving. All right. So in lieu of repeating it, you're just going to say, ask the Smithsonian what they think. Pretty much. And then there's one other thing I want to shout out, which appropriately is shout, because if shout didn't exist, I would have to buy new t-shirts every week, essentially. I'd spill stuff on myself all the time. It's really strange. But shout works really, really well. And I love it. I love shout so much. And I went online and found that there's a shout,

like ask shout how to treat a particular kind of stain. So there's like some different criteria you put in and then shout tells you what to do, what product, what shout product will work, or what, you know, whether you should try, you know, heat or whatever. And I thought that was a very helpful site as well. We, I don't think of ever use shout. Oh, it's so good. Emily won't allow that now. Shout specifically, too. Shout. I'm not talking about any competitor. I'm talking specifically about shout. What's your question? I don't have a question.

I just wanted to make sure everybody knows how much shout helps my life. I got you. I thought you were asking if shout specifically was what Emily won around that. No, no, but let's get to that. Why is Emily opposed to shout? Well, I mean, we've been all through this

and Emily's all natural sort of. Other camps, sure. Yeah. But regardless, that's fine. I've got some stain shirts probably as a result. Bring it to my house. I'll secretly wash them with show. So I'm stains won't come out. I mean, that's just the fact of the matter. A dry cleaner can do their very best, but if a dry cleaner can't get out of stain, that means that that stain is just forever there. Yep, you just set that shirt on fire and say no one could love you now. Exactly.

To me, the finishing process is the most interesting because when you're walking through Wayne's Miss Closet and you see all those shirts, so perfectly pressed, a little stiff for me, but that's how Wayne liked them. I always was like, how in the world, like, what is going on there to get these things looking like that? Or that double crease? Sure. He was one of those people. This is all called the finishing process. And it is, these are the videos that are a lot of fun to watch on YouTube, in my opinion. Yeah, because it's pretty nuts.

They have a specific machine for each one of these things. And again, you kind of touched on it. Like, this is a very automated process, but there's humans overseeing the automation at every step of the way. So there's people working in conjunction with machines. It's kind of beautiful in a way. What I hope the future is like, rather than

the machines just completely dominating us into extinction. But I saw some probably some of those same videos you did where they'll like take a shirt and then puff it up with air. Suddenly it's like an invisible person's in the shirt and then they're running like steam through it and getting like the press to it. It's pretty neat. Yeah, it's amazing. They put it on this form called a shirt buck, or it could be a double buck or a triple buck, if there are several of these, and it's basically like almost like just a torso form. And when they blast this steam in there, it's not like when you have a steamer at home, like a home steamer, and you have something hanging and you're sort of gently steaming it.

That's pitiful. It is blasting steam in there. Like you said, to wear a puffs up, whether it's a pants or whether it's on a shirt buck. And while it is, they do this while it's wet, then they blow it out with that air in a very violent manner to where it puffs up. And at that point, the shirt looks

really good to my eyeballs or the pants or whatever, but that is not it because they still go through a ironing process, whether it is a sort of an ironing board with a big large press that closes down like a coffin lid or a huge line of human beings with irons that are connected to a, I had like a tube coming from the ceiling, into the back of the iron, which what I assume is delivering steam. Those are awesome. So they didn't have to keep like refilling the iron with water. And they are, there are human beings ironing.

I saw, in case it matters, the toughest thing and the most time consuming to press are chinos for any kind of cotton pant. I would not have guests, oh, because they take another, like you can so easily wrinkle and while you're pressing one part of it. I guess. It's gotta be, because that's my experience.

Yeah, but it's pretty amazing. And that's when those things, and when they're interviews with these people, they're really, you can tell they're into making this stuff look perfect. Yeah, it's something we should say that I'm not sure if we've gotten across, but in the dry cleaning process, your clothes actually get wet.

But in addition to that, there's a reason why a lot of kinds of clothes say dry clean only. It's because they're very delicate fabrics, they're fabrics that could shrink very easily. That's one of the big problems with water. Water penetrates fabric. And so it can actually collapse like the tension of the weave. It can cause like in like wool.

I saw that wool hair fibers have scales that the water basically makes stick together. And so it water shrinks things. Dry cleaning solvents don't actually penetrate the fabric. They manage to get stains off, but they don't do anything that would cause like your shirt or your sweater or whatever to shrink. And they're much more delicate on the garment itself. Like yeah, it tumbles and all that stuff, but it's much softer, much more delicate. So, there's a reason why something say dry clean only.

And there's, so that's essentially the point of dry cleaning is it treats fabrics much more gently in the process and in the types of chemicals that are used. Yeah. I mean, even if you're just standard clothing, like the washing and drying process at home is just it's rough on clothes period That's what it calls. There's a lot of like wear and tear on your clothes. It's not necessarily from literally wearing it But just that washing and drying process is just it's tough You know, yeah, no it is plus it's time consuming Yeah, you it is, plus it's time consuming. Yeah. You ever do that, do you ever do that deal like when you were a single guy where you would

drop your laundry off and have someone else do it? I think I might have in college although this could be one of those things where I'm like making up a memory just to, you know, sound like a big shot. But I think maybe once, but no, for the most part I would do it myself. Now you means like, I got the laundry. I know what I'm doing. You just spray shout on your stuff and I'll wash it. Yeah, I did it occasionally back in the day. When I was super broke, I would scrape up enough money

to have someone do my laundry because it was just, there was nothing like it, you know. That's awesome, man. I got one other thing. Do you have something else for the food break? What other brand do you have in the market? None. You know. That's awesome, man. I got one other thing. Do you have something that's weird right? What other brand do you want to market? None. All right. You know how they put plastic over your dry cleaning when you take it home? Yeah, that process is even cool. It is pretty cool. It's a machine with a human working with the machine, is it not? Okay. Yeah. So that's

intended to get your stuff home, to keep your dirty nasty cheetos filled car from getting your new clothes clean Or your new clean clothes dirty When you get at home you want to take it off you want to take the plastic off and recycle it You can recycle plastic like that. It's called plastic film at your grocery store along with your plastic grocery bag So don't throw it away Recycle it, but get it off your clothes immediately when you get home because it can actually really become harsh and just trapped in the clothing under the plastic. You don't want to just store your clothes in plastic and your closet.

If I walk into your closet and you got a bunch of stuff hanging there in dry cleaner bags, I'm calling the police because I'm in fear for my life. For sure. Because there's probably a person in one of those bags too, right? Yeah. You know who never saw that and you know who's closet I never saw that in? Rad's dad. Wayne Smith. That's right.

No way. All right. Should we take another break? I think so. All right. We're going to come back and basically the rest of the episode is going to be about chemicals. My name is Theo Henderson, host and creator of the podcast called Wee-in-House. My lived experience in house-sitness is extensive. I was one of over 75,000 experiencing house-sitness on a given night in Los Angeles.

Here's a simple truth. House-slessness is everywhere. It affects over half a billion people in the United States alone. We, the in-house, will explore the sensitive strategy of displacement from the perspective of the in-house. On my podcast, we're going to cover far more than my story. We're going to debunk the myths around house-sistence. We're going to remember and humanize a community who have passed by spotlighting house-systems remembrance day. More importantly, we're going to look at ways we criminalize in-house. Because if you can demonize them, you can criminalize them.

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I'm Carmen Laurent, and this season, I am joined full-time by world-renowned Janie Danger. Janie, what are we talking about in season three? We're talking about life, Carmen. Beauty Translate is about the many fragmented lives spreading across this rich tapestry of the trans experience. Janie, this sounds like an all-new format. Podcasting 2 is finally here. Thoughtful perspectives on current events?

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Bye! Bye! Alright, we promised talk of chemicals, and that's what we're going to do because we're going to talk a lot about perk. Just statistically, we can go ahead and throw out some numbers. 60 to 65% of dry cleaners in the United States still use perk. It sounds high. Fairly high.

It's higher in Europe, about 85%. That's higher. Yeah, that's a good average. I did see other numbers, but that looks to be about the average. Right. And I also found this that a lot of EU countries have mandated fifth-generation machines, although you could get a... There are allowances if you have a fourth-generation, if you do all this other stuff. In the US, you can have, if you have a second generation machine, there are no first generation anymore basically.

Yeah. That was the separate washer dryer, yeah. Yeah. If you have a second generation machine in the US, you can upgrade it, I'm sorry, you have to upgrade it to at least a fourth. And if you have a third, it can actually be retrofitted to make it a fourth, but they're not selling or installing anything anymore unless it's a fifth generation.

I got you, unless you like know a guy. Yeah, and that's because Perk is a neurotoxin, and it causes all sorts of problems with people and the environment. Yeah, we talked about how the stuff that Perk replaced turned out to be neurotoxin and it causes all sorts of problems with people and the environment. Yeah, we talked about how the stuff that Perk replaced turned out to be neurotoxins. Well, Perk's a neurotoxin too, which I mean, just the fact that it's related

to chloroform is probably something of a giveaway. Yeah. But it's even worse than anyone thought. And in the 90s, the United States EPA started being like, hey, we've been studying this perk on the site here, and it's actually really bad. It can do some magical stuff. Like for all intents and purposes, it's magic,

in the way that it can move through the environment. For example, when we talked about those transfer machines, Chuck, where you would take the wet, perk laden laundry and move it into the dryer, spill perk out. Like you do at home. Exactly. Exactly, but imagine it's perk dripping on your floor.

That perk is able to travel through concrete, through soil, and get into groundwater. And even while it's getting into groundwater, other molecules of perk are getting stuck in the little air pockets, vaporizing and spreading elsewhere, and then going up into neighboring buildings and people are breathing it in there.

Again, this is a neurotoxin. It's a carcinogen and it is the thing that has fueled the dry cleaning industry for the last 80 years. And we're just starting to realize that if you have an old dry cleaning facility that you own, it's probably a super fun site, and you're going to have to spend an eye popping amount of money to clean it up, or else you'll, I don't know about go to jail,

but you certainly will never be able to sell the place. Yeah, I was reading up on some EPA studies, and they followed a group of Cape Cod communities in this one study, because apparently there was a group of Cape Cod communities in this one study, because apparently there was a lot of perk in their area, a lot of perk prolonged perk exposure. And they found that it was in the drinking water in these Cape Cod communities,

and in these communities, they found a host of pregnancy-related issues over the years, as well as an increased risk of bipolar disorder, illicit drug use, PTSD, vision problems, and some kinds of cancer. Wow. You know, not gonna say that every single bit of that is perk, but this was a very long-term study

over this community, or these communities that were kind of riddled with perk exposure. And it's so bad that the EPA said by December 2020, it's legal to use it, but you can't be in a residential building. You can't be on the ground floor of a New York City apartment building and still be using perk. And states like California, of course, have completely banned perk as of this year. Well, is this coming out next year or this year?

As of, yeah, it's coming out next year, so we're talking about last year. Yeah, which is 2023. Right. Yeah, so they said we're done. It's over. Like, you can't use Perk anymore. Not only that, we're requiring you, again, remember these small business owners,

to pay for these cleanups. Like, as I think the small business administration passed a rule that said, if you own a dry cleaner, or you own a building that has historically housed a dry cleaner, even decades ago, you have to pay an environmental consultant to come in and tell you whether your site's contaminated. And I think there was a 2002 Florida study. This is 2002. I couldn't find a

more updated one, but it said that they found a dry cleaner contamination to migrate it off site at 57% of contaminated sites. And a more recent study by the EPA found that 75% of dry cleaning sites are contaminated, and they think there's possibly 9,000 and 90,000 former dry cleaning sites that are contaminated as well. Wow. Yeah, and you have to pay sometimes a few million dollars

to remediate this site. What's nuts, Chuck? I don't know if you saw in that San Luis Obispo article that even if you're a barber shop and there used to be a dry cleaning place in your building, in your shop, 20 years before, long before you ever came along and bought the place, you still have to have that environmental study run and then pay for any cleanup that's found.

Wow. It's nuts. It's off the rails right now. Yeah. And you know, all the damage we were talking about, potential risk and damage to humans, that's not even covering the damage that it does to aquatic creatures, and the fact that this runoff, you know, once it gets into the groundwater, and then the runoff in various, you know, bodies of water, really, really bad for, you know, basically anything in the water. So a lot of people are like, well, I'm just going to close up shop, and they're like, you still have to pay for it, you know, like it's really a nightmare for people who are just who own these dry cleaning places.

And the reason why they have like a real chance or a case saying like, why should we have to put this bill ourselves? Is because they were following, like they often had to get permits in some states to use perk in decades past. So the government gave them exactly. So they were following best practices. They were getting the permits they needed to to use perk. And now that everybody's like perks really bad, you need to clean it up.

They're like, well, wait a minute. I need some help here. So I hope just for the, the, um, the small business owners sake, yeah, that there's a shift in, you shift in who needs to pay for this because supposedly it's a $8 billion problem in the United States alone. Wow. So obviously with the problems of perk and the shrinking numbers of people using perk or dry cleaners using perk, you're wondering probably, well, what are they using these days? Green dry cleaning

is a thing now that is becoming more widespread, kind of slowly, I guess, but that seems to be the future. And there are currently four different methods of, quote, unquote, green dry cleaning. And we're going to talk about those. I'm glad you said, quote, unquote, yeah, because we're going to talk about those. I'm glad you said quote unquote. Yeah, because we're going to talk about some green washing terms here in a minute to ensure. Big time. Wet cleaning. We're there, everyone. It uses water.

We're back to water. It uses water and these very specialized detergents that are basically just easier on your clothes. They're much milder. The EPA says it's, you know, you're not using hazardous chemicals, you're not generating hazardous waste, you're not generating air pollution,

and you're not contaminating the water around you. You're not gonna be a super fun site if you switch to wet cleaning, but that also costs money. And that's why places like King County where Seattle, Washington is, is saying, hey, you can get a grant to help cover the costs of, which is like between 40 and 60 grand

depending on how big your operation is of switching to this greener wet cleaning. Right. And some people are like, it's not going to work as well as dry cleaning and they're like, you give it a chance. We've really made some advances. So the jury's out on white cleaning, but I think just the fact that it's one of the actual green alternatives that is truly green

and that isn't green washing, who knows, it might be the future of dry cleaning is a white cleaning, which I wonder if they'll still call it dry cleaning. I bet they will. Are you think so? Yeah, you can't, I mean, that's such brand identity there. Yeah, for sure. It's not? Yeah, you can't, I mean, that's such a brand identity there.

Yeah, for sure. It's not a brand, but you know what I mean? Tell us about liquid CO2, because that's another good one, huh? This one is supposedly totally non-toxic, environmentally friendly, and it uses liquid CO2, which, you know, like the power of oxy,

or how you use like baking soda and stuff like that. Carbon dioxide can actually lift stains off of fabrics. So this is a combination of liquid CO2 and gas CO2 that's used instead of solvents or I guess as a solvent in dry cleaning machines. And the problem with these, there's very few problems. They actually use CO2 that's captured from other industrial sites. So the CO2 that's being used in this new generation liquid CO2 dry cleaning machines would have become air pollution otherwise. So they figured out a way to divert air pollution

into dry cleaning. The real downside of this is it's really, really expensive to switch over The real downside of is it's really really expensive to switch over to CO2 Cleaning machines. I think they're about 150 grand each which is like three times more than a perk machine Yeah, like a gin five perk exactly Band name Jim five per yeah, I think so again one of your like early bands before you like really form good band. Yeah There's also a one and this is the third one on our list called D F 2000 hydrocarbons solvent This is the one where they're they're using the term organic They're saying this solvent is organic and that is

That is where you got to get a little, things get a little tricky because organic is very much, or very much can be a greenwashing word. Yeah. I'm not saying that is in this case necessarily, but it can, okay, well, it's very misleading because organic means that it has what green earth, and we're going to talk about them in a second, green earth says that just means it has a carbon backbone, like gasoline is organic, and when you see words like organic or biodegradable, that doesn't mean that it's awesome, things can biodegrade into a hazardous

substance still. Yeah, so DF2000 is produced by ExxonMobil if that gives you any clarity on whether it's green or not. And even the container, it looks like a five gallon jug of motor oil essentially. I think Conoco makes their own version, whatever. And it's a petroleum-based solvent, just like they used to use back in the day where dry cleaners blew up once in a while. If you're using hydrocarbon solvent, you have to have a air pollution certificate. And it's cheap, like the machines that use them

are way cheaper than a liquid carbon dioxide cleaning machine. But currently it's being, you know, touted as an organic green alternative. So some people are starting to use this. I would guess to their dismay five or ten years down the road, because there are actual like green alternatives, including liquid carbon dioxide and wet cleaning. Yeah, the last one on our list here is a silicon-based solvents. And the biggest, it's a brand name, the largest brand of green, dry cleaning processes is

called green earth, all one word, but still a capital G, capital E. And they use liquid silicone, which is odorless and colorless, and apparently is a great carrier for detergents. Yeah, it's also inert. So remember we said that perk can interact with your dyes and stuff and cause feeding. This stuff does not interact with the fabric itself, not chemically at least. So it doesn't cause any kind of fading or anything like that. And it breaks down into sand and water and carbon dioxide when you get rid of it, right? The problem is it releases dioxin when it's produced. It's a carcinogen. And I saw somewhere that it's been shown to be siloxane, it's been shown to be carcinogenic in rats

and possibly hepatotoxic, which means it affects liver function. So this one is very much touted as a green alternative, but the jury is definitely still out on, you know, whether it's non-toxic or not. Yeah, you know, there are actually people in the world, I call them that guy that say things like, hey, just don't get any rats to work there, problem solved. Who says that?

Just people say. Show them to me. It's like it's been, you know, there's been shown to kill rats and they're like, oh, so don't get any rats around. No, I'm with you. It's like, well, hey, how about you get a job doing that working with it then if you have no problems with it Mr. Smarty pants So I think we should repeat the CO2 the liquid carbon dioxide cleaning is seems to be the best most green process

But it's just the cost of those machines. There's always a downside. Yes. There's always a downside. I can't think of any wiser words to end this one on. I got nothing else. You know, I had to take my rug into a dry cleaner, not too long ago down the street. And they were very nice, even though they sent it to a facility and it took far too long to correct this, the stain on my rug in my new studio

and I was very mad because it was a brand new. I actually wouldn't have stained it. It had gotten wet and it smelled. It was like that sour wet smell. From being Johnsonized? Yeah, listener mail. That's a nice. Yeah, listen to me. Yeah, Chuck said listen to me, everybody, so that means it's time for the listen to me. This is from Natalie. Hey guys, I'm a post-doc research scientist studying paleoclimatology and paleoceanography. Wow. And that's from Natalie.

Thank you. You guys always do a great job with your Earth Science episode in the recent episode on Plague Tectonics. It was a bit of a miss opportunity though to highlight a cool gal who played a part in the acceptance of the theory of Plague Tectonics. Marie Thart. She created the first world map of the sea floor and discovered the giant mountain range between the Atlantic Ocean that we now know as the mid-Atlantic range. Nice. created the first world map of the sea floor and discovered the giant mountain range between

the Atlantic Ocean that we now know as the mid-Atlantic range. That's pretty amazing, because she is a woman in science. She had to fight a bit of an uphill battle to get her work accepted. She talks about how her initial interpretations were dismissed as, quote, girl talk. She was confined to the background with her male colleague getting much of the credit for her ideas until more recently. Seems like a fun person and even mentions how she wanted to include mermaids and shipwrecks in the first map, but her colleague, Bruce, He's in, would have none of it. Come on, Bruce.

That's fun. For sure. There's a great photo of her looking like a BA smoking a cigarette at her drafting table and that is from Natalie. Thanks a lot Natalie. Yeah it's kind of disappointing we didn't run across her in our research but maybe we weren't looking in the right place as a check. Well it sounds like there's a pretty good reason for that. So hats off, our beret is off to Marie Thart. Marie Thart, look out for an episode on her at some point in time. Her and our friend Frederick Johnson. Gabby Johnson?

No, not Gabby Johnson. You know the guy who originally invented dry cleaning back in 1821. Oh! Thomas Jennings! Yeah, we should totally do one on Thomas Jennings. Of course, way off with Frederick Johnson. That's right. I think Gabby Johnson continued to do it. So, too.

Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Natalie did, you can send us an email. You can send it to stuffpodcast.com at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. In the new Amy and TJ podcast, news anchors Amy Robock and TJ Holmes explore everything from current events to pop culture in a way that's informative, entertaining and authentically groundbreaking.

Join them as they share their voices for the first time since making their own headlines. This is the first time that we actually get to say, what happened and where we are today. Listen to the Amy and DJ Podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nicole Perkins, and in my new podcast, The Godmother, I'm inviting you to 1930s New York. I want to tell you the extraordinary story of Eunice Carter, the trailblazing black female lawyer who put New York's most notorious gangsters behind bars.

Somehow, she's been largely forgotten. Listen to the Godmother, with me, Nicole Perkins, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. My name is Theo Henderson, hosting creator of the podcast called William House. My lived experience in house-sitness is extensive. I was one of over 75,000 experiencing house-sitness on a given night in Los Angeles. Here's a simple truth. House-sitness is everywhere.

It affects over a half a billion people in the United States alone. Weedian House will explore the senseless tragedy of displacement from the perspective of the in-house. Listen to Wee Dean Houses on I-Hard Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.