January 16, 2024 • 52 mins
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!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, we're back for the new year. We hope
you had a great holiday. And while we know some
of you got some Stuff you Should Know live tickets
in your stocking this year, we know that there are
still plenty of people out there in Seattle in San
Francisco who can still get tickets.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, our Portland show sold out, so ts for those
late comers, but you can still go to Seattle or
San Francisco to see us. On January twenty fourth, we'll
be at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, And on Friday,
January twenty sixth, we'll see you guys in San Francisco
at the Sydney Goldstein Theater for SF Sketch Fest. Go
to stuffishould Know dot com or link tree slash sysk
(00:33):
and you'll see all the info you need and links
to buy tickets. We'll see you guys in a couple
of weeks.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here and we are ready to martinize
the heck out of you in one hour or less.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, you like heavy starch, medium guy.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
You want a double crease in your pant legs. I
had to look that up. Have you ever heard of
such a thing?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah? I got a triple crease? What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
No, for real, have you heard of a double crease before?
I demand to know.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I don't think so, because I'm not someone who often
uses a dry cleaner.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
You and a lot of people these days, pall. Apparently
the pandemic just crushed dry cleaning because people stopped going
to the office as much, which means that they stop
needing clothes that required dry cleaning as much. But even
before that, people had sorry to work from home a
little more and the office had gone much more casual
(01:40):
than before. So dry cleaners have been hurting for a while.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
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, what
is that, I'll take it into a dry cleaner. Uh.
But I was taught at a very young age how
to launder and iron clothing, oh neat. But I also
don't often have to do that because I rarely have
(02:06):
to wear, like, you know, a pressed dress shirt to
a thing.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You don't put a double crease in your jeans?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
What's a double crease?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So I looked it up. It strikes me as possibly
kind of like a nineteen forties you know, that woolf
from the cartoons, kind of zoot suit. Look, okay, maybe
those would have double creases. The only thing I could find,
there's a pair of Benetton pants for women that has
a double crease, and I'm pretty sure I could find
the second one, not one hundred percent, but I guess
(02:38):
that's the thing that some people request of the dry cleaners,
people who ain't quite right. I take it.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah. My big dry cleaning sort of memory and story
is that.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
You have a dry cleaning story.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Well not a story, but I just you know, my
best friend in high school, Rat who the cartographer, Hello
rad Ye. His dad Wayne had a closet with like
twenty five light blue, perfectly dry clean shirts, like twenty
five pinklins, twenty five white ones. It was like a
(03:13):
Patrick Bateman esque closet, and I remember just going in
there in high school and just being.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Like, wow, were there like leather gloves and a knife
stashed behind all this?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
No, Wayne was a good guy, but anyway, that's my
dry cleaning memory from high school. I have a stat
here that's from twenty seventeen. There were in the United
States there were twenty six hundred dry cleaners. I've seen
that as high as thirty thousand now. But one thing
I wanted to point out is that dry cleaners in
(03:46):
the United States eighty percent of their employees slash owners
are ethnic minorities of the United States, and majority of
which are Korean Americans. And all this just 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
(04:09):
and small business owners that can be a tough thing.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely like a stereotype in the
United States that dry cleaners are often owned by people
of Korean descent or straight up Korean immigrants. And apparently
in the seventies 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
(04:33):
immigrants and dry cleaners. Apparently a Korean immigrant is thirty
four 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, we'll see there's a lot
of financial pressure on them right now that seems potentially
(04:54):
fairly unfair.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
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. Yeah, 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,
(05:17):
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 is on those amazing racks
that I just I love those things so much. That's
spin around, you know, all those close spinning around.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Can't you just imagine like a ham hanging from each
one in your kitchen.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I just for some reason I love it. But apparently
there are some where 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.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
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 dry at home, though yes we do, whether
we need to or not, I insist.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Let's just camera that simplistic fact home.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
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.
(06:30):
There is a man, a black American named Thomas Jennings,
who was a tailor in New York City who in
eighteen twenty one got a patent for a process of
essentially dry cleaning you call 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
(06:54):
to history. Apparently there was a fire. I want to
do at least a short stuff on this, Chuck. There
was a fire in eighteen thirty six that destroyed ten
thousand patents basically all the patents from seventeen ninety to
eighteen thirty six gone in this fire, and that included
Thomas Jennings patent. So we're not at all sure exactly
(07:15):
what the deal was, but we know that he was
the first to come up with probably what would be
considered dry cleaning.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
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 forty 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,
(07:45):
thus recognizing him as a citizen of the United States,
which was a very big deal at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
He also helped to organize something called the Legal Rights Association. Again,
this is the eighteen twenty eighteen thirties, and that group
would challenge people in court with vile lawsuits against acts
of discrimination in the eighteen thirties. So that, yeah, he
definitely does deserve his own episode. It sounds like two yeah,
follow up, Okay, a couple of decades later, over in France,
(08:19):
there is a man named Jean Baptiste Jolie spelled like jolly.
It's a great name, all three names together with that
nice round Baptiste in the middle. He was he made die.
He was a dier, a dier maker, and he had
a tablecloth that was had an oil lamp knocked over
(08:40):
on it. Luckily it was probably not lit at the time,
or else this would have been a totally different story.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
But the.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Flammable liquid inside probably camphene, which is kind of like
it's derived from the same stuff as that turpentine is
made from it. He found that where it had spilled
kind of like cleaned his tablecloth, and he said, you
know what, I think I might be onto something here.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
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. Early solvents were very
dangerous and flammable. Sometimes it was kerosene, sometimes it was gasoline. Yeah,
(09:28):
I remember, I think it was. Was it the Viscilla
Axe murder episode where the rugs were super flammable because
they had been cleaned with gas.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I don't remember that.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
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 flamed so quickly.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
It might have been the hinter Kfek murders.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Oh was that a fire?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Oh no, I'll bet it was the Solder children, the
missing Solder children. There was a fire central to that one.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Okay, that may have been it, but I know we
talked about it. At some point. They used, you know,
like we said, kerosene, gasoline, turpentine, the resin of which
is terpene. And that is why when you go camping
you look for what's called like a lighter's not or
fat lighter, and that is the very resinous interior of
a pine tree, which is superflammable and that really helps
(10:22):
get a fire started. But all this to say is
that stuff was pretty dangerous to use as a close cleaner.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, so much so that like 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,
(10:55):
specifically carbon tetrachloride and trichloroethylene, which worked ish. 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 trichloroethylene was really
(11:16):
harsh on your clothes, and both of them would give
you cancer and disrupt your neurological system too.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, for sure. Before they try these, they tried a
kind of mineral spirit called Stoddard solvent, which I think
that may have been flammable too. Yeah, But where they
eventually landed is on something called perchloroethylene or PERK as
we're going to call it as everybody calls it.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Is it perchloro?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, it sure is p e erc And that became
sort of the go to for a long long time.
It still is 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
(12:05):
way as far as those previous alternatives. Yeah, that as
we'll see, it ate so great.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
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
(12:34):
the guy who started one hour Martinizing, who was a chemist,
who was the one who went back and was studying
pair chlora ethylene 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.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah. And his name was Gabby Johnson. I don't think so, No,
was it something Martin?
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, yes, Okay, I can't remember his first name, but
his last name is definitely Martin.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Because johnsonizing just sounds dirty.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
It really does.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Let me go out and Johnson eyes.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
It really does. Yeah, I'm like, I'm blessing right now.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
So, like I said, we're going to talk more about
the sort of the downsides of perk. But even at
the time when they were like, Hey, this is so
much better and safer, you'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.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Does anyone else see the elves?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Yeah, everyone's like, yeah, but it's not flammable. It's not
turpentine or kerosene, so it's better.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yeah, some of these things. I think per 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 uh, well, should we
(14:08):
take a break and then talk about what happens when
you drop your clothes off at a dry cleaning place?
I think, so, okay, well, everybody, we're gonna take a
break and then come back and talk about what happens
when you drop your clothes off at a dry cleaning place.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Get I say something. Yeah, before the break, you sounded
like John Wilson.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Is that the guy who started one hour martinizing?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
No, have you seen John Wilson's TV show How To
with John Wilson?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I can't say that I have.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
It's great. I had a three season run and it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Does he have a glasses and kind of sandy blonde hair?
Speaker 1 (15:24):
He has glasses, but he's never seen on screen.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So, oh no, I'm not sure who that is.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Then, yeah, her the show, but he also sort of
talks like this as a narrator.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Oh okay, yeah, he sounds like my kind of guy.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
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, this kind
of thing he does, 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 it's certainly not
super interesting, but they're gonna inspect your clothes. One reason
(16:02):
and they're going to 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 butt. As far as when people come back
and say, hey, the button's missing, they can say, sorry,
(16:23):
sir or ma'am, your button was missing when it came
in here, because we wrote it down and showed you.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, peep the sticker chump.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
This is kind of what they're famous for saying. If
they do find some stain that they're like, oh, 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, and this is where the magic happens.
I really feel like this is some good stuff here.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
That's right. So here's what happens. We repeat the fact
that it just means no water, your clothes are still
getting wet.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, say it again?
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Well I just did. Can't we say it another time?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (17:10):
All right, no water, that's all dry cleaning means.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah, it gets wet. Your clothes gets super duper wet,
soaked even but not in water instead in an industrial
synthetic solvent perk, the perk that we've talked about.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, and they do this in huge machines. And you know,
these cleaning machines are not that different from just sort
of your garden variety industrial wet laundry machine as far
as I can tell.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, but there 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.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yeah, it happens. The cycles are much faster, and you know,
there's all kinds of things that we'll talk talk about
that make it different. But if you put it in there,
it's still got a drum that's gonna spin and jostle
your clothes around twenty two one hundred 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 there.
(18:18):
They're super robust because perk is about seventy percent sixty
nine percent in fact, heavier than water is. Yeah, so
it's this stuff's heavy. It's all just super juiced up motors,
heavy duty equipment.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, and I mean they shoot a lot of perk
at this stuff. I think on the order of like
twenty five gallons an hour. They really johnsonize the clothes withever.
But what's cool you said that there's a lot of
differences between these these industrial dry cleaning machines and like
say an industrial washer dryer, And the key difference is
(18:55):
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.
(19:17):
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
(19:39):
you keep it in this closed system.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, and it separates from water as well, right.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yes, because it's again it's seventy percent 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.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yep, that's right. There are also things like carbon absorbers.
There are inductive fans. They have these sensors that will
lock everything if there is like 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
(20:20):
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. Yeah, but
this thing is, you know, 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
(20:41):
of that stuff in.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
There, Yeah, usually about twenty five gallons a minute, So
like I think there'll be two hundred gallons over like
an eight minute cycle pumped in and there's not two
hundred gallons of perk in there at any one time.
Is new perk is coming in. The old perk that's
gone through the clothes already and is clinging to dirt
is filtered out right. So this is like this constant
(21:03):
process of perk, old perk, new perk coming in, old
perk going out through these filters and everything. And then
when the cycle's done and all the perk 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
(21:24):
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
(21:46):
it will be lost.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, for sure. Something I've done a lot of the
past two days is watch dry cleaning videos.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Oh, tell me you saw the one.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Well, I don't know what was the one.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
It's called what is dry cleaning? Does dry cleaning work?
On YouTube? Did you see that one? No?
Speaker 1 (22:03):
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 machine,
(22:25):
so that's what it does. It's human beings that are
overseeing this 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 were owners and operators talked about how
important it was to have humans inspecting each and everything
(22:46):
that comes out, yeah, and making sure it like passes
their their rigorous standards.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, because if you don't keep your filters clean, I'm
guessing like after every cycle, essentially that perk's not going
to get filtered as much, so you're going to be
using dirty perk solvent and that has a really terrible
effect on clothes. It can make close dingy, right, it
can make close dingy over time. Perk interacts with colors,
so it can actually strip the dye from some colors
(23:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Absolutely, So if hopefully your quality control is through the
roof at your local dry cleaner, they're going to take
that garment out, 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 as with my own two hands. And so
this is called post cleaning spot removal, and that is
(23:49):
just extra post cleaning processes that is done by a
person to make sure that stain gets out.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yes, because dray cleaning facility, they have a whole array
of solvents that are specifically four different types of stains
and apparently you can divide two stains into two general camps.
You've got wet type stains which are wet in nature
like tea, wine something like that. You have dry side stains,
(24:22):
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
spotting or the pre spotting. But that's why it's really important.
(24:45):
If you take your clothes to the dry cleaner, don't
just throw the shirt at them and be like, peace.
I'll see 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? 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
(25:06):
at least you've told them very rudely. You've told them
about that stain, and they'll treat it accordingly.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, as far as you yourself pre treating a stain,
you know, if you ask your dry cleaner, they're probably
gonna 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.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
There's a lot out there.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I found a short article on the internet, Chuck, that
was by the Smithsonian's preservationists about how to remove stains.
I'm like, Okay, pretty sure these people know how to
remove old stains, so I would go with whatever advice they're.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Giving, all right, So in lieu of repeating it, you're
just gonna say, ask the Smithsonian what they.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Think, pretty much. And then there's one other other thing
I want to shout out, which appropriately a 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
(26:33):
like ask shout how to treat a particular kind of stain.
So there's like some different criteria put in and then
shout tells you what to do, 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 sight as well.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
I don't think i've ever used shout.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Oh so good.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Emily won't allow that.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Now shout specifically too. I'm not talking about any competitor.
I'm talking specifically about shout.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
What's your question.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
I don't have a question. I just wanted to make
sure everybody knows how much shout helps my life.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
I got y'all thought you were asking if shout specifically
was what Emily won't allow on that.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
No, no, but let's get to that. Why is Emily
opposed to shout?
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Well, I mean we've been all through this and Emily's
all natural sort of Oh the Kims, Sure, yeah, but regardless,
that's fine. I've got some stained shirts probably as a result.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Bring them to my house. I'll secretly wash them with shout.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Some 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.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yep, you just set that shirt on fire and say,
no one could love.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
You now exactly. To me, the finishing process is the
most interesting because when you're walking through Waynsmith's closet and
you see all those shirts so perfectly pressed, a little
stiff for me, but that's how Wayne liked him. I
always was like, how in the world, Like, what is
going on there to get these things looking like that
(28:09):
or that double crease?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Sure he was one of those people.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
This is all called the finishing process, and it is.
These are the videos. They're a lot of fun to
watch on YouTube in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, because it's pretty nuts. They have like 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 like
every step of the way, so there's like people working
in conjunction with machines. It's kind of beautiful in a way.
What I hope the futures like rather than the machines
(28:45):
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 steamed through it and getting like
the press to it. It's pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
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 it's basically like a 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 a you know,
(29:24):
something hanging in you're sort of gently steaming it. It
is blasting steam in there, like you said, to where
it puffs up, whether it's 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,
(29:44):
and at that point the shirt looks really good to
my eyeballs, or the pants or whatever, but that 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
(30:07):
are connected to a had like a tube coming from
the ceiling into the back of the iron, which what
I assume is delivering steam 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
(30:29):
are chinos or any kind of cotton pant.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I would not have guessed, oh, because they take another
like you can so easily wrinkle them while you're pressing
one part of it. I guess gotta be because that's
my experience.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, but it's it's pretty amazing. And that's when those
things and when you when there are interviews with these people,
they're really you can tell they're into making this stuff
look perfect.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, 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
(31:15):
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 water shrinks things. Dry cleaning solvents don't actually
penetrate the fabric. They manage to get stains off, but
they don't they don't do anything that would cause like
(31:35):
your your 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 some things
say dry clean only, and there's so that's essentially the
point of dry cleaning is it treats fabrics much more
(31:55):
gently in the process and in the types of chemicals
are used.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
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 periods. Sure, that's what causes 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.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, No, it is. Plus it's time consuming.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah. Do 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.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I 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 I think maybe once. But no,
for the most part, I would do it myself. Now.
U mean's like I got the laundry, I know what
I'm doing. You just spray shout on your stuff and
I'll wash it.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
That's awesome. Man. I got one other thing. Do you
have something with other brand? None?
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Right?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
You know how they put plastic over your your dry
cleaning when you take it home.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Yeah, that process is even cool.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
It is pretty cool. It's a machine with a human
working with the machine, is it not. Okay, So that's
intended to get your stuff home, to keep your dirty,
nasty Cheetos filled car from getting your new clothes cleaned
or your new clean clothes dirty. When you get it 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
(33:38):
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 in
your closet.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
If I walk into your closet and you got a
bunch of stuff hanging there in dry cleaner bag, I'm
calling the police because I'm in fear for my life.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
For sure, because there's probably a person in one of
those backs too, right.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah, and you know who never I never saw that,
And you know whose closet? I never saw that?
Speaker 2 (34:12):
In Rad's dad, Wayne Smith, that's.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Right, No way, all right? Should we take another break?
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I think so.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
All right, we're gonna come back and basically the rest
of the episode is going to be about chemicals. All right.
(35:03):
We promised talk of chemicals, and that's what we're gonna do,
because we're going to talk a lot about perk. Just statistically,
we can go ahead and throw out some numbers. Sixty
to sixty five percent of dry cleaners in the United
States still use perk. That sounds high, fairly high. It's
higher in Europe about eighty five percent.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
That's higher.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah, that's a good average, because I did see other numbers,
but that looks to be about the average. 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
(35:48):
have if you have a second generation machine. There are
no first generation anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Basically, yeah, that was the separate washer dryer. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I gotcha, unless you like know a guy.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, and that's because perk is a neurotoxin and it
causes all sorts of problems with people and the environment.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah. We talked about how the stuff that perk replaced
turned out to be neurotoxins. Well, perk's are neurotoxin too,
which I mean just the fact that it's related to
chloroform is probably something of a giveaway. But it's even
worse than anyone thought. And in the nineties the United
States EPA started being like, hey, we've been studying this
perk on the side here, and it's actually really bad.
(36:49):
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 truck where you would take the wet
perk laden laundry and move it into the dryer.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Spill Perk'll do it home exactly, per.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
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.
(37:30):
And again, this is a neurotoxin, it's a carcinogen, and
it is the thing that has fueled the dry cleaning
industry for the last eighty 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
(37:53):
I don't know about go to jail, but you certainly
will never be able to sell the place.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
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 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
(38:20):
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 going to say like every single bit
of that is perk, but this was a very long
term study over this community or these communities that were
(38:43):
kind of riddled with perk exposure. And it's so bad
that the EPA said by December twenty twenty, it's legal
to use it, but you can't be in a like
a residential building. You can't be on the ground floor
of a New York City apartartment building and still be
using perk. And states like California, of course, have completely
(39:06):
banned perk as of this year. Well, is this coming
out next year this year?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
As of Yeah, it's coming out next year. So we're
talking about last.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Year, yeah, which is twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Yeah, so they said we're done, it's over, like we're
you can't use perk anymore. And 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
(39:40):
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
two thousand and two Florida study. This is two thousand
and two, so there was the I couldn't find a
more updated one, but it said that they found eye
cleaner contamination to migrated off site at fifty seven percent
(40:04):
of contaminated sites. And a more recent study by the
EPA found that seventy five percent of dry cleaning sites
are contaminated and they think there's possibly nine thousand and
ninety thousand former dry cleaning sites that are contaminated as well.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
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 like, if you're a barber shop
and there used to be a dry cleaning place in
your building, in your shop twenty years before, long before
(40:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, and you know, all the damage we were talking
about potential risks and damage to humans, that's not even
you know, 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 they runoff in various
you know, bodies of water really really bad for you know,
basically anything in the water.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
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 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 fut this bill ourselves is because
they were following like they often had to get permits
(41:42):
in some states to use perk in decades.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Past, so the government gave them.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Exactly so they were following best practices, they were getting
the permits they needed to to use perk. And now
that everybody's like perk's 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
small business owner's sake, yeah, that there's a shift in
you know, who needs to pay for this because posedly
(42:08):
it's an eight billion dollar problem in the United States alone. Wow.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah. 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
(42:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
I'm I'm glad you said quote unquote yeah, because.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Because we're going to talk about some green washing terms
here in a minute too.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Sure, big time.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
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 or 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,
(43:14):
and you're not contaminating the water around you. You're not
going to 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 forty and sixty grand depending
(43:34):
on how big your operation is of switching to this
greener wet cleaning.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Right, And some people are like, it's not going to
work as well as dry cleaning, and they're like, give
it a chance. We've really made some advances. So the
jury's out on wet cleaning. But I think just the
fact that it's one of the actual green alternatives that
is truly green, that isn't green washing. Who knows it
might be the future of dry cleaning is wet cleaning,
(43:59):
which I wonder if they'll still call it dry cleaning.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
I bet they will. You think, so, yeah, you can't.
I mean, that's a there's such brand identity there.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, for sure, it's not a brand.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
But you know what I mean, Uh, tell us about
liquid Co two because that's another good one. Huh.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
This one is supposedly totally non toxic, environmentally friendly, and
it uses liquid CO two, which you know like the
power of oxy or how you use like baking sod
and stuff like that. Carbon dioxide can actually lift stains
off of fabrics. So this is a combination of liquid
CO two and gas CO two that's used instead of
(44:35):
solvents or I guess as a solvent in dry cleaning machines.
And the problem with these there's very few problems that
they actually use CO two that's captured from other industrial sites.
So the CO two that's being used in these new
generation liquid CO two dry cleaning machines would have become
(44:55):
air pollution otherwise, so they've figured out a way to
divert air pollution into dry cleaning. The real downside of
is it's really really expensive to switch over to CO
two cleaning machines. I think they're about one hundred and
fifty grand each was is like three times more than
a perk machine.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Yeah, like a Gen five perk.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Exactly band name Gen five per Yeah, I think so
again one of your early bands before you like really
form a good band.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Yeah, there's also a one, this is the third one
on our list called d F two thousand hydrocarbon 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
(45:51):
much can be a greenwashing word. 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 gonna tell about them in a second,
Green Earth says that just means it has a carbon backbone. Yeah,
like gasoline is organic. And when you see words like
(46:12):
organic or biodegradable like that doesn't mean that it's awesome.
Things can biodegrade into a hazardous substance. Still.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah. So DF two thousand is produced by Exxon Mobile,
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 there's I think
Conico makes their own version whatever, and it's a petroleum
based solvent just like they used to use back in
(46:42):
the day where dry cleaners blue up once in a while.
If you're using a hydrocarbon solvent. You have to have
an air pollution certificate, and it's cheap, like the machines
that use them, a way cheaper than a liquid carbon
dioxide cleaning machine. But currently it's being you know, tow
it as an organic green alternative, so some people are
(47:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, it's also inert. So remember we said that perk
can interact with your dyes and stuff and cause fading.
This stuff does not interact with the fabric itself, not
chemically at least, so it doesn't 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, Yeah, is is it releases
(48:01):
dioxin when it's produced. It's a carcinogen, and I saw
somewhere that it's been shown to be. Siloxane has been
shown to be carcinogenic in rats and possibly hepatotoxic, which
means it affects liver function. So this one is very
(48:21):
much touted as a green alternative, but the jury is
definitely still out on, you know, whether it's it's non
toxic or not.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Yeah, you know, there are actually people in the world.
I call them that guy that say things like we
just don't get any rats to work. There problem solved?
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Who says that? Just people show them to me.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
It's like, it's been you know, this has been shown
to kill rats, and you're like, oh, so don't get
any rats around.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
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, mister smarty pants.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
So I think we should repeat the CEO too. 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.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yes, there's always a downside. I can't think of any
wiser words to end this one on.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
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.
(49:35):
It had gotten wet and it smelled. It was what's
like that sour wet smell.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
From being johnsonized.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
Yeah. Listener mail, Yeah, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Said, listener mail everybody, So that means it's time for
the listener mail.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
This is from Natalie. Hey, guys, I'm a postdoc research
scientist studying paleoclimatology and paleo oceanography. And that's from Natalie
the en. You guys always do a great job with
your Earth science episode. In the recent episode on plate tectonics,
so it was a bit of a misopportunity though, to
(50:14):
highlight a cool gal who played a part in the
acceptance of the theory of plate tectonics, Marie Tharp. She
created the first world map of the seafloor and discovered
the giant Mountain range between the Atlantic Ocean that we
now know is a 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
(50:35):
work accepted. She talks about how her initial interpretations were
dismissed as quote girl talk. She's 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 Emon mentions how she wanted to include
mermaids and shipwrecks in the first map, but her colleague
(50:57):
Bruce Heasen 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.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Thanks a Lott. 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 places.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Check well, it sounds like there's a pretty good reason
for that, So hats off, our beret is off to
Marie Tharp.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Marie Tharp, look out for an episode on her. At
some point in time. Her and our friend Frederick Johnson.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
Gabby Johnson.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
No, not Gabby Johnson. You know the guy who originally
invented dry cleaning back in eighteen twenty one. Oh, Thomas Jennings.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yeah, we should totally do one on Thomas Jennings.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
It was way off with Frederick Johnson.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
That's all right. I think Gabby Johnson can teach you.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
So too well. If you want to get in touch
with this, like Natalie did, you can send us an email.
You can send it to stuff podcast at iheartradiot up.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey everybody, we're back for the new year. We hope
you had a great holiday. And while we know some
of you got some Stuff you Should Know live tickets
in your stocking this year, we know that there are
still plenty of people out there in Seattle in San
Francisco who can still get tickets.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, our Portland show sold out, so ts for those
late comers, but you can still go to Seattle or
San Francisco to see us. On January twenty fourth, we'll
be at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, And on Friday,
January twenty sixth, we'll see you guys in San Francisco
at the Sydney Goldstein Theater for SF Sketch Fest. Go
to stuffishould Know dot com or link tree slash sysk
(00:33):
and you'll see all the info you need and links
to buy tickets. We'll see you guys in a couple
of weeks.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here and we are ready to martinize
the heck out of you in one hour or less.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, you like heavy starch, medium guy.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
You want a double crease in your pant legs. I
had to look that up. Have you ever heard of
such a thing?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah? I got a triple crease? What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
No, for real, have you heard of a double crease before?
I demand to know.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I don't think so, because I'm not someone who often
uses a dry cleaner.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
You and a lot of people these days, pall. Apparently
the pandemic just crushed dry cleaning because people stopped going
to the office as much, which means that they stop
needing clothes that required dry cleaning as much. But even
before that, people had sorry to work from home a
little more and the office had gone much more casual
(01:40):
than before. So dry cleaners have been hurting for a while.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
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, what
is that, I'll take it into a dry cleaner. Uh.
But I was taught at a very young age how
to launder and iron clothing, oh neat. But I also
don't often have to do that because I rarely have
(02:06):
to wear, like, you know, a pressed dress shirt to
a thing.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You don't put a double crease in your jeans?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
What's a double crease?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So I looked it up. It strikes me as possibly
kind of like a nineteen forties you know, that woolf
from the cartoons, kind of zoot suit. Look, okay, maybe
those would have double creases. The only thing I could find,
there's a pair of Benetton pants for women that has
a double crease, and I'm pretty sure I could find
the second one, not one hundred percent, but I guess
(02:38):
that's the thing that some people request of the dry cleaners,
people who ain't quite right. I take it.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah. My big dry cleaning sort of memory and story
is that.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
You have a dry cleaning story.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Well not a story, but I just you know, my
best friend in high school, Rat who the cartographer, Hello
rad Ye. His dad Wayne had a closet with like
twenty five light blue, perfectly dry clean shirts, like twenty
five pinklins, twenty five white ones. It was like a
(03:13):
Patrick Bateman esque closet, and I remember just going in
there in high school and just being.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Like, wow, were there like leather gloves and a knife
stashed behind all this?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
No, Wayne was a good guy, but anyway, that's my
dry cleaning memory from high school. I have a stat
here that's from twenty seventeen. There were in the United
States there were twenty six hundred dry cleaners. I've seen
that as high as thirty thousand now. But one thing
I wanted to point out is that dry cleaners in
(03:46):
the United States eighty percent of their employees slash owners
are ethnic minorities of the United States, and majority of
which are Korean Americans. And all this just 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
(04:09):
and small business owners that can be a tough thing.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely like a stereotype in the
United States that dry cleaners are often owned by people
of Korean descent or straight up Korean immigrants. And apparently
in the seventies 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
(04:33):
immigrants and dry cleaners. Apparently a Korean immigrant is thirty
four 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, we'll see there's a lot
of financial pressure on them right now that seems potentially
(04:54):
fairly unfair.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
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. Yeah, 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,
(05:17):
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 is on those amazing racks
that I just I love those things so much. That's
spin around, you know, all those close spinning around.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Can't you just imagine like a ham hanging from each
one in your kitchen.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
I just for some reason I love it. But apparently
there are some where 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.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
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 dry at home, though yes we do, whether
we need to or not, I insist.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Let's just camera that simplistic fact home.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
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.
(06:30):
There is a man, a black American named Thomas Jennings,
who was a tailor in New York City who in
eighteen twenty one got a patent for a process of
essentially dry cleaning you call 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
(06:54):
to history. Apparently there was a fire. I want to
do at least a short stuff on this, Chuck. There
was a fire in eighteen thirty six that destroyed ten
thousand patents basically all the patents from seventeen ninety to
eighteen thirty six gone in this fire, and that included
Thomas Jennings patent. So we're not at all sure exactly
(07:15):
what the deal was, but we know that he was
the first to come up with probably what would be
considered dry cleaning.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
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 forty 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,
(07:45):
thus recognizing him as a citizen of the United States,
which was a very big deal at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
He also helped to organize something called the Legal Rights Association. Again,
this is the eighteen twenty eighteen thirties, and that group
would challenge people in court with vile lawsuits against acts
of discrimination in the eighteen thirties. So that, yeah, he
definitely does deserve his own episode. It sounds like two yeah,
follow up, Okay, a couple of decades later, over in France,
(08:19):
there is a man named Jean Baptiste Jolie spelled like jolly.
It's a great name, all three names together with that
nice round Baptiste in the middle. He was he made die.
He was a dier, a dier maker, and he had
a tablecloth that was had an oil lamp knocked over
(08:40):
on it. Luckily it was probably not lit at the time,
or else this would have been a totally different story.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
But the.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Flammable liquid inside probably camphene, which is kind of like
it's derived from the same stuff as that turpentine is
made from it. He found that where it had spilled
kind of like cleaned his tablecloth, and he said, you
know what, I think I might be onto something here.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
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. Early solvents were very
dangerous and flammable. Sometimes it was kerosene, sometimes it was gasoline. Yeah,
(09:28):
I remember, I think it was. Was it the Viscilla
Axe murder episode where the rugs were super flammable because
they had been cleaned with gas.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I don't remember that.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
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 flamed so quickly.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
It might have been the hinter Kfek murders.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Oh was that a fire?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Oh no, I'll bet it was the Solder children, the
missing Solder children. There was a fire central to that one.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Okay, that may have been it, but I know we
talked about it. At some point. They used, you know,
like we said, kerosene, gasoline, turpentine, the resin of which
is terpene. And that is why when you go camping
you look for what's called like a lighter's not or
fat lighter, and that is the very resinous interior of
a pine tree, which is superflammable and that really helps
(10:22):
get a fire started. But all this to say is
that stuff was pretty dangerous to use as a close cleaner.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, so much so that like 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,
(10:55):
specifically carbon tetrachloride and trichloroethylene, which worked ish. 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 trichloroethylene was really
(11:16):
harsh on your clothes, and both of them would give
you cancer and disrupt your neurological system too.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, for sure. Before they try these, they tried a
kind of mineral spirit called Stoddard solvent, which I think
that may have been flammable too. Yeah, But where they
eventually landed is on something called perchloroethylene or PERK as
we're going to call it as everybody calls it.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Is it perchloro?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, it sure is p e erc And that became
sort of the go to for a long long time.
It still is 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
(12:05):
way as far as those previous alternatives. Yeah, that as
we'll see, it ate so great.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
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
(12:34):
the guy who started one hour Martinizing, who was a chemist,
who was the one who went back and was studying
pair chlora ethylene 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.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah. And his name was Gabby Johnson. I don't think so, No,
was it something Martin?
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, yes, Okay, I can't remember his first name, but
his last name is definitely Martin.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Because johnsonizing just sounds dirty.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
It really does.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Let me go out and Johnson eyes.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
It really does. Yeah, I'm like, I'm blessing right now.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
So, like I said, we're going to talk more about
the sort of the downsides of perk. But even at
the time when they were like, Hey, this is so
much better and safer, you'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.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Does anyone else see the elves?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Yeah, everyone's like, yeah, but it's not flammable. It's not
turpentine or kerosene, so it's better.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yeah, some of these things. I think per 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 uh, well, should we
(14:08):
take a break and then talk about what happens when
you drop your clothes off at a dry cleaning place?
I think, so, okay, well, everybody, we're gonna take a
break and then come back and talk about what happens
when you drop your clothes off at a dry cleaning place.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Get I say something. Yeah, before the break, you sounded
like John Wilson.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Is that the guy who started one hour martinizing?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
No, have you seen John Wilson's TV show How To
with John Wilson?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I can't say that I have.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
It's great. I had a three season run and it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Does he have a glasses and kind of sandy blonde hair?
Speaker 1 (15:24):
He has glasses, but he's never seen on screen.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So, oh no, I'm not sure who that is.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Then, yeah, her the show, but he also sort of
talks like this as a narrator.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Oh okay, yeah, he sounds like my kind of guy.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
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, this kind
of thing he does, 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 it's certainly not
super interesting, but they're gonna inspect your clothes. One reason
(16:02):
and they're going to 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 butt. As far as when people come back
and say, hey, the button's missing, they can say, sorry,
(16:23):
sir or ma'am, your button was missing when it came
in here, because we wrote it down and showed you.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, peep the sticker chump.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
This is kind of what they're famous for saying. If
they do find some stain that they're like, oh, 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, and this is where the magic happens.
I really feel like this is some good stuff here.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
That's right. So here's what happens. We repeat the fact
that it just means no water, your clothes are still
getting wet.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, say it again?
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Well I just did. Can't we say it another time?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (17:10):
All right, no water, that's all dry cleaning means.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah, it gets wet. Your clothes gets super duper wet,
soaked even but not in water instead in an industrial
synthetic solvent perk, the perk that we've talked about.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, and they do this in huge machines. And you know,
these cleaning machines are not that different from just sort
of your garden variety industrial wet laundry machine as far
as I can tell.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, but there 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.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yeah, it happens. The cycles are much faster, and you know,
there's all kinds of things that we'll talk talk about
that make it different. But if you put it in there,
it's still got a drum that's gonna spin and jostle
your clothes around twenty two one hundred 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 there.
(18:18):
They're super robust because perk is about seventy percent sixty
nine percent in fact, heavier than water is. Yeah, so
it's this stuff's heavy. It's all just super juiced up motors,
heavy duty equipment.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, and I mean they shoot a lot of perk
at this stuff. I think on the order of like
twenty five gallons an hour. They really johnsonize the clothes withever.
But what's cool you said that there's a lot of
differences between these these industrial dry cleaning machines and like
say an industrial washer dryer, And the key difference is
(18:55):
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.
(19:17):
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
(19:39):
you keep it in this closed system.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, and it separates from water as well, right.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yes, because it's again it's seventy percent 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.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yep, that's right. There are also things like carbon absorbers.
There are inductive fans. They have these sensors that will
lock everything if there is like 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
(20:20):
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. Yeah, but
this thing is, you know, 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
(20:41):
of that stuff in.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
There, Yeah, usually about twenty five gallons a minute, So
like I think there'll be two hundred gallons over like
an eight minute cycle pumped in and there's not two
hundred gallons of perk in there at any one time.
Is new perk is coming in. The old perk that's
gone through the clothes already and is clinging to dirt
is filtered out right. So this is like this constant
(21:03):
process of perk, old perk, new perk coming in, old
perk going out through these filters and everything. And then
when the cycle's done and all the perk 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
(21:24):
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
(21:46):
it will be lost.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, for sure. Something I've done a lot of the
past two days is watch dry cleaning videos.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Oh, tell me you saw the one.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Well, I don't know what was the one.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
It's called what is dry cleaning? Does dry cleaning work?
On YouTube? Did you see that one? No?
Speaker 1 (22:03):
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 machine,
(22:25):
so that's what it does. It's human beings that are
overseeing this 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 were owners and operators talked about how
important it was to have humans inspecting each and everything
(22:46):
that comes out, yeah, and making sure it like passes
their their rigorous standards.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, because if you don't keep your filters clean, I'm
guessing like after every cycle, essentially that perk's not going
to get filtered as much, so you're going to be
using dirty perk solvent and that has a really terrible
effect on clothes. It can make close dingy, right, it
can make close dingy over time. Perk interacts with colors,
so it can actually strip the dye from some colors
(23:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Absolutely, So if hopefully your quality control is through the
roof at your local dry cleaner, they're going to take
that garment out, 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 as with my own two hands. And so
this is called post cleaning spot removal, and that is
(23:49):
just extra post cleaning processes that is done by a
person to make sure that stain gets out.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yes, because dray cleaning facility, they have a whole array
of solvents that are specifically four different types of stains
and apparently you can divide two stains into two general camps.
You've got wet type stains which are wet in nature
like tea, wine something like that. You have dry side stains,
(24:22):
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
spotting or the pre spotting. But that's why it's really important.
(24:45):
If you take your clothes to the dry cleaner, don't
just throw the shirt at them and be like, peace.
I'll see 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? 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
(25:06):
at least you've told them very rudely. You've told them
about that stain, and they'll treat it accordingly.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, as far as you yourself pre treating a stain,
you know, if you ask your dry cleaner, they're probably
gonna 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.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
There's a lot out there.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I found a short article on the internet, Chuck, that
was by the Smithsonian's preservationists about how to remove stains.
I'm like, Okay, pretty sure these people know how to
remove old stains, so I would go with whatever advice they're.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Giving, all right, So in lieu of repeating it, you're
just gonna say, ask the Smithsonian what they.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Think, pretty much. And then there's one other other thing
I want to shout out, which appropriately a 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
(26:33):
like ask shout how to treat a particular kind of stain.
So there's like some different criteria put in and then
shout tells you what to do, 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 sight as well.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
I don't think i've ever used shout.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Oh so good.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Emily won't allow that.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Now shout specifically too. I'm not talking about any competitor.
I'm talking specifically about shout.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
What's your question.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
I don't have a question. I just wanted to make
sure everybody knows how much shout helps my life.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
I got y'all thought you were asking if shout specifically
was what Emily won't allow on that.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
No, no, but let's get to that. Why is Emily
opposed to shout?
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Well, I mean we've been all through this and Emily's
all natural sort of Oh the Kims, Sure, yeah, but regardless,
that's fine. I've got some stained shirts probably as a result.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Bring them to my house. I'll secretly wash them with shout.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Some 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.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yep, you just set that shirt on fire and say,
no one could love.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
You now exactly. To me, the finishing process is the
most interesting because when you're walking through Waynsmith's closet and
you see all those shirts so perfectly pressed, a little
stiff for me, but that's how Wayne liked him. I
always was like, how in the world, Like, what is
going on there to get these things looking like that
(28:09):
or that double crease?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Sure he was one of those people.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
This is all called the finishing process, and it is.
These are the videos. They're a lot of fun to
watch on YouTube in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, because it's pretty nuts. They have like 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 like
every step of the way, so there's like people working
in conjunction with machines. It's kind of beautiful in a way.
What I hope the futures like rather than the machines
(28:45):
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 steamed through it and getting like
the press to it. It's pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
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 it's basically like a 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 a you know,
(29:24):
something hanging in you're sort of gently steaming it. It
is blasting steam in there, like you said, to where
it puffs up, whether it's 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,
(29:44):
and at that point the shirt looks really good to
my eyeballs, or the pants or whatever, but that 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
(30:07):
are connected to a had like a tube coming from
the ceiling into the back of the iron, which what
I assume is delivering steam 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
(30:29):
are chinos or any kind of cotton pant.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I would not have guessed, oh, because they take another
like you can so easily wrinkle them while you're pressing
one part of it. I guess gotta be because that's
my experience.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, but it's it's pretty amazing. And that's when those
things and when you when there are interviews with these people,
they're really you can tell they're into making this stuff
look perfect.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, 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
(31:15):
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 water shrinks things. Dry cleaning solvents don't actually
penetrate the fabric. They manage to get stains off, but
they don't they don't do anything that would cause like
(31:35):
your your 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 some things
say dry clean only, and there's so that's essentially the
point of dry cleaning is it treats fabrics much more
(31:55):
gently in the process and in the types of chemicals
are used.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
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 periods. Sure, that's what causes 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.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, No, it is. Plus it's time consuming.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah. Do 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.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I 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 I think maybe once. But no,
for the most part, I would do it myself. Now.
U mean's like I got the laundry, I know what
I'm doing. You just spray shout on your stuff and
I'll wash it.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
That's awesome. Man. I got one other thing. Do you
have something with other brand? None?
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Right?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
You know how they put plastic over your your dry
cleaning when you take it home.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Yeah, that process is even cool.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
It is pretty cool. It's a machine with a human
working with the machine, is it not. Okay, So that's
intended to get your stuff home, to keep your dirty,
nasty Cheetos filled car from getting your new clothes cleaned
or your new clean clothes dirty. When you get it 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
(33:38):
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 in
your closet.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
If I walk into your closet and you got a
bunch of stuff hanging there in dry cleaner bag, I'm
calling the police because I'm in fear for my life.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
For sure, because there's probably a person in one of
those backs too, right.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah, and you know who never I never saw that,
And you know whose closet? I never saw that?
Speaker 2 (34:12):
In Rad's dad, Wayne Smith, that's.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Right, No way, all right? Should we take another break?
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I think so.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
All right, we're gonna come back and basically the rest
of the episode is going to be about chemicals. All right.
(35:03):
We promised talk of chemicals, and that's what we're gonna do,
because we're going to talk a lot about perk. Just statistically,
we can go ahead and throw out some numbers. Sixty
to sixty five percent of dry cleaners in the United
States still use perk. That sounds high, fairly high. It's
higher in Europe about eighty five percent.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
That's higher.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah, that's a good average, because I did see other numbers,
but that looks to be about the average. 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
(35:48):
have if you have a second generation machine. There are
no first generation anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Basically, yeah, that was the separate washer dryer. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I gotcha, unless you like know a guy.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, and that's because perk is a neurotoxin and it
causes all sorts of problems with people and the environment.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah. We talked about how the stuff that perk replaced
turned out to be neurotoxins. Well, perk's are neurotoxin too,
which I mean just the fact that it's related to
chloroform is probably something of a giveaway. But it's even
worse than anyone thought. And in the nineties the United
States EPA started being like, hey, we've been studying this
perk on the side here, and it's actually really bad.
(36:49):
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 truck where you would take the wet
perk laden laundry and move it into the dryer.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Spill Perk'll do it home exactly, per.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
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.
(37:30):
And again, this is a neurotoxin, it's a carcinogen, and
it is the thing that has fueled the dry cleaning
industry for the last eighty 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
(37:53):
I don't know about go to jail, but you certainly
will never be able to sell the place.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
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 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
(38:20):
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 going to say like every single bit
of that is perk, but this was a very long
term study over this community or these communities that were
(38:43):
kind of riddled with perk exposure. And it's so bad
that the EPA said by December twenty twenty, it's legal
to use it, but you can't be in a like
a residential building. You can't be on the ground floor
of a New York City apartartment building and still be
using perk. And states like California, of course, have completely
(39:06):
banned perk as of this year. Well, is this coming
out next year this year?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
As of Yeah, it's coming out next year. So we're
talking about last.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Year, yeah, which is twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Yeah, so they said we're done, it's over, like we're
you can't use perk anymore. And 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
(39:40):
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
two thousand and two Florida study. This is two thousand
and two, so there was the I couldn't find a
more updated one, but it said that they found eye
cleaner contamination to migrated off site at fifty seven percent
(40:04):
of contaminated sites. And a more recent study by the
EPA found that seventy five percent of dry cleaning sites
are contaminated and they think there's possibly nine thousand and
ninety thousand former dry cleaning sites that are contaminated as well.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
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 like, if you're a barber shop
and there used to be a dry cleaning place in
your building, in your shop twenty years before, long before
(40:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, and you know, all the damage we were talking
about potential risks and damage to humans, that's not even
you know, 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 they runoff in various
you know, bodies of water really really bad for you know,
basically anything in the water.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
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 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 fut this bill ourselves is because
they were following like they often had to get permits
(41:42):
in some states to use perk in decades.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Past, so the government gave them.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Exactly so they were following best practices, they were getting
the permits they needed to to use perk. And now
that everybody's like perk's 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
small business owner's sake, yeah, that there's a shift in
you know, who needs to pay for this because posedly
(42:08):
it's an eight billion dollar problem in the United States alone. Wow.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah. 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
(42:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
I'm I'm glad you said quote unquote yeah, because.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Because we're going to talk about some green washing terms
here in a minute too.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Sure, big time.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
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 or 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,
(43:14):
and you're not contaminating the water around you. You're not
going to 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 forty and sixty grand depending
(43:34):
on how big your operation is of switching to this
greener wet cleaning.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Right, And some people are like, it's not going to
work as well as dry cleaning, and they're like, give
it a chance. We've really made some advances. So the
jury's out on wet cleaning. But I think just the
fact that it's one of the actual green alternatives that
is truly green, that isn't green washing. Who knows it
might be the future of dry cleaning is wet cleaning,
(43:59):
which I wonder if they'll still call it dry cleaning.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
I bet they will. You think, so, yeah, you can't.
I mean, that's a there's such brand identity there.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, for sure, it's not a brand.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
But you know what I mean, Uh, tell us about
liquid Co two because that's another good one. Huh.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
This one is supposedly totally non toxic, environmentally friendly, and
it uses liquid CO two, which you know like the
power of oxy or how you use like baking sod
and stuff like that. Carbon dioxide can actually lift stains
off of fabrics. So this is a combination of liquid
CO two and gas CO two that's used instead of
(44:35):
solvents or I guess as a solvent in dry cleaning machines.
And the problem with these there's very few problems that
they actually use CO two that's captured from other industrial sites.
So the CO two that's being used in these new
generation liquid CO two dry cleaning machines would have become
(44:55):
air pollution otherwise, so they've figured out a way to
divert air pollution into dry cleaning. The real downside of
is it's really really expensive to switch over to CO
two cleaning machines. I think they're about one hundred and
fifty grand each was is like three times more than
a perk machine.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Yeah, like a Gen five perk.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Exactly band name Gen five per Yeah, I think so
again one of your early bands before you like really
form a good band.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Yeah, there's also a one, this is the third one
on our list called d F two thousand hydrocarbon 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
(45:51):
much can be a greenwashing word. 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 gonna tell about them in a second,
Green Earth says that just means it has a carbon backbone. Yeah,
like gasoline is organic. And when you see words like
(46:12):
organic or biodegradable like that doesn't mean that it's awesome.
Things can biodegrade into a hazardous substance. Still.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah. So DF two thousand is produced by Exxon Mobile,
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 there's I think
Conico makes their own version whatever, and it's a petroleum
based solvent just like they used to use back in
(46:42):
the day where dry cleaners blue up once in a while.
If you're using a hydrocarbon solvent. You have to have
an air pollution certificate, and it's cheap, like the machines
that use them, a way cheaper than a liquid carbon
dioxide cleaning machine. But currently it's being you know, tow
it as an organic green alternative, so some people are
(47:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, it's also inert. So remember we said that perk
can interact with your dyes and stuff and cause fading.
This stuff does not interact with the fabric itself, not
chemically at least, so it doesn't 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, Yeah, is is it releases
(48:01):
dioxin when it's produced. It's a carcinogen, and I saw
somewhere that it's been shown to be. Siloxane has been
shown to be carcinogenic in rats and possibly hepatotoxic, which
means it affects liver function. So this one is very
(48:21):
much touted as a green alternative, but the jury is
definitely still out on, you know, whether it's it's non
toxic or not.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Yeah, you know, there are actually people in the world.
I call them that guy that say things like we
just don't get any rats to work. There problem solved?
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Who says that? Just people show them to me.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
It's like, it's been you know, this has been shown
to kill rats, and you're like, oh, so don't get
any rats around.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
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, mister smarty pants.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
So I think we should repeat the CEO too. 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.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yes, there's always a downside. I can't think of any
wiser words to end this one on.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
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.
(49:35):
It had gotten wet and it smelled. It was what's
like that sour wet smell.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
From being johnsonized.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
Yeah. Listener mail, Yeah, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Said, listener mail everybody, So that means it's time for
the listener mail.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
This is from Natalie. Hey, guys, I'm a postdoc research
scientist studying paleoclimatology and paleo oceanography. And that's from Natalie
the en. You guys always do a great job with
your Earth science episode. In the recent episode on plate tectonics,
so it was a bit of a misopportunity though, to
(50:14):
highlight a cool gal who played a part in the
acceptance of the theory of plate tectonics, Marie Tharp. She
created the first world map of the seafloor and discovered
the giant Mountain range between the Atlantic Ocean that we
now know is a 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
(50:35):
work accepted. She talks about how her initial interpretations were
dismissed as quote girl talk. She's 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 Emon mentions how she wanted to include
mermaids and shipwrecks in the first map, but her colleague
(50:57):
Bruce Heasen 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.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Thanks a Lott. 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 places.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Check well, it sounds like there's a pretty good reason
for that, So hats off, our beret is off to
Marie Tharp.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Marie Tharp, look out for an episode on her. At
some point in time. Her and our friend Frederick Johnson.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
Gabby Johnson.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
No, not Gabby Johnson. You know the guy who originally
invented dry cleaning back in eighteen twenty one. Oh, Thomas Jennings.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yeah, we should totally do one on Thomas Jennings.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
It was way off with Frederick Johnson.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
That's all right. I think Gabby Johnson can teach you.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
So too well. If you want to get in touch
with this, like Natalie did, you can send us an email.
You can send it to stuff podcast at iheartradiot up.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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