BrainStuff Classics: Is Dry Cleaning Actually Wet?

Spoiler Alert: Yep, dry cleaning isn't dry. Instead, it uses a petroleum solvent in place of water. Learn more about dry cleaning in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam here with a classic episode
from what host who came before? Christian Sager. This is
a topic we stumbled on a few years back and
just had to do an episode about because it turns
out that dry cleaning isn't dry. So what is it? Hey,

(00:25):
brain stuff, it's Christian Sager. Have you ever wondered how
dry cleaning is actually dry? Well, you're about to know.
You're about to know how dry cleaning works a little bit.
So dry cleaning, here's the thing. It's not really dry.
It's actually using liquids. It just doesn't use water, and
that's why they call it dry cleaning, which, yeah, it's

(00:46):
pretty stupid, but look that's just the case. In the
old timey days, dry cleaning used to use a solvent
called kerosene. You might light your heater with it in
your home, especially if you live in a rural area
and you don't have electric city. But people figured out
that kerosene is not that great for clothes, especially once
we had something called para chloral ethylene or perk in

(01:10):
dry cleaning vernacular. This is the solvent that's most commonly
used today. It's probably highly toxic. And there's a lot
of dry cleaners out there that you'll see say they
use greener methods. Now, when you see that, they're usually
using liquefied carbon dioxide, which is a lot greener than perk,

(01:30):
and which is again a highly toxic solvent, but it works. Now.
A dry cleaning machine looks a lot like a combination
washer dryer that you might see, you know, an industrial
sized one, and it is a finely tuned instrument. What
the dry cleaner will do is throw your clothes in
there with this perk or whatever solvent it is that

(01:51):
they're using, and they heat it to a perfect eighties
six degrees fahrenheit. Anything more than that it's just going
to destroy your clothes, and anything less than that it
might not have the cleaning ability that you wanted to have.
And it's going to agitate it and take the perk
and filter it out and reuse it. And then when
it's finally done, all of the perk is going to

(02:13):
be captured and reused and sequestered before they even open
the door, because you don't want this stuff going into
the atmosphere and then voila you have a dry cleaned
wet shirt that has been cleaned with industrial solvents, and
that is dry cleaning. And yes, it's wet still, but

(02:33):
at least it's not water. Today's episode was written by
me and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this
and lots of other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com.
Brain Stuff is production of my heart Radio. For more
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