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Speaker 1: Y dot com. Mosey It's always there. Welcome to brain
Speaker 1: Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com Where smart Happens. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, what is dry cleaning?
Speaker 1: What actually happens when you take something to be dry cleaned?
Speaker 1: When you wash your clothes at home in the washing machine,
Speaker 1: water is the solvent used to do the cleaning. Water
Speaker 1: is cheap and easy to get, but water has some problems.
Speaker 1: Many types of fabric, for example, do not handle water
Speaker 1: very well. Woolen water don't mix, and then there are
Speaker 1: many types of stains that water isn't particularly good at removing.
Speaker 1: And then there's fading water in the chlorine it contains
Speaker 1: confide certain colors. In dry cleaning, a petroleum solvent is
Speaker 1: used instead of water. It is dry only in the
Speaker 1: sense that it's not wet with water. Instead, it is
Speaker 1: wet with solvent. In the early days of dry cleaning,
Speaker 1: this solvent was often kerosene or gasoline deodorized. Of course,
Speaker 1: today the industry uses a solvent called perchloroethylene almost universally.
Speaker 1: The clothes are washed in this solvent inside a seal
Speaker 1: dry cleaning machine. Then the solvent is recovered in an
Speaker 1: extractor so that it can be reused and so that
Speaker 1: it doesn't evaporate into the air and cause pollution. Once
Speaker 1: the clothes are cleaned, they're pressed so they look like new.
Speaker 1: There's a fair amount of controversy around perchloroethylene or PERK
Speaker 1: and its health effects. Some dry cleaners are now using
Speaker 1: liquid c O two instead. Do you have any ideas
Speaker 1: or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me
Speaker 1: an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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