Even though I hate it when you put the darks in with the whites, that's not what I'm going to talk about here.

Have you ever stopped to think about what happens when you wash your laundry? How the chemicals in the detergent affect you, for instance? Or how about the backstory on your clothes - how they are made, and what residue washing them leaves on the environment? What about those fabric softeners and dryer sheets?

There's a lot of dirty clothes in the world, and that means there's a lot of pollutants and chemicals being released every day in huge quantities. Just to give you a taste, here is some of what your dryer sheets are made of:

* Benzyl Acetate: Linked to pancreatic cancer
* Benzyl Alcohol: Upper respiratory tract irritant
* Ethanol: On the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Hazardous Waste list and can cause central nervous system disorders
* A-Terpineol: Can cause respiratory problems, including fatal edema, and central nervous system damage
* Ethyl Acetate: A narcotic on the EPA's Hazardous Waste list
* Camphor: Causes central nervous system disorders
* Chloroform: Neurotoxic, anesthetic and carcinogenic
* Linalool: A narcotic that causes central nervous system disorders
* Pentane: A chemical known to be harmful if inhaled
Source Article at SixWise

That article at SixWise goes on to state "In reality, nearly every chemical that touches the skin finds its way into the body and into the bloodstream. It certainly may do so in small quantities, but fact is families don't use fabric softeners, dryer sheets and all the other popular household chemicals once or twice - they use them repeatedly."

As if that wasn't bad enough, your clothes themselves are toxic. Some even have formaldehyde - that deadly stuff they use to preserve dead animals with. Again SixWise has an entire article on the synthetic fabrics you most want to avoid, and why.

Don't forget the laundry detergent itself, which SixWise also exposes in an article. All these chemicals aren't just dangerous to you, but just as an example, the optical brighteners have been "found to be toxic to fish and to cause bacterial mutations."

That's a lot of chemicals! For some reason, I'm reminded of the Hindenburg - half of the solution for thermite on the top, the other half for thermite on the bottom. Big surprise, you had a thermite reaction, and the Hindenburg went down in a huge ball of fire (MythBusters video on YouTube).

So how are companies looking to turn this around? WorldChanging has a report on a company making green clothes, and adding information on their labels to help you wash them with more environmentally sound practices. Marks and Spencer, a UK based company, has their work cut out for them.

They are not waxing lyrical about carbon offsetting their emissions or recycling their materials, but about cutting their emissions and selecting raw materials from renewable and sustainable sources. Their five focus areas are climate change, raw materials, waste, healthy eating and fair partner, and through addressing each, they embed better and greener practices into their products -- an important factor in creating widespread change across consumer sectors.
Source Article at WorldChanging

Not to mention SixWise has a store where you can directly buy more environmentally sound alternatives to your everyday static sheets and detergent. If you missed the links, go check out the chemical-free static eliminator and their chemical free alternatives to detergents.