Dryer Sheets & Fabric Softeners - Dangerous?

[Frontier Mom]

At church last night, someone mentioned how toxic dryer sheets and fabric softeners are to the body. Somehow, I've never heard of this. So, I did a google search and there is lots of info. about this on the web. Here is just one article I found.

 

Toxic Danger

 

So my ?, do you still use these and if not, what do you use instead to soften and control static cling? My son has eczema and this might make his skin better.

[ThatCyndiGirl]

No, I had never heard that, but I did note that they are selling an alternative on their site, so that fact alone would give me pause.

[angela in ohio]

If they could cite a study that found that using them in a normal way casued health concerns, I would pay attention. Since I am not eating them or working in a factory producing them, I am not concerned by the ingredients' dangers in high doses.

[Perry]

If they could cite a study that found that using them in a normal way casued health concerns, I would pay attention. Since I am not eating them or working in a factory producing them, I am not concerned by the ingredients' dangers in high doses.

Yeah, and they lose a little credibility when they warn of ethanol (we drink it) and camphor (it has medicinal uses). I looked up a couple of the other ingredients and I'm not concerned.

[Mrs Mungo]

 

 

• 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

• Limonene: Known carcinogen

• 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

 

 

I have crazy skin allergies, I have to use an SLS-free toothpaste or my mouth breaks out. I cannot use most fabric softener because they break my skin out. I *can* use the dryer sheets from Arm & Hammer, they seem to be fine.

 

What I wanted to say, however, is that many of these items are found in other common household and beauty items. Benzyl Alcohol is in most hair gels. Limonene comes from citrus fruits and is in *lots* of bath products, products you use directly on your skin and although it was once thought to be a carcinogen, studies have proven otherwise.

 

This sort of page is scare tactics with no science behind them.

Edited January 28, 2010 by Mrs Mungo

[catalinakel]

I have never used either. I don't like to put any sort of chemical on my skin or clothing that is not necessary.

[Perry]

 

 

I have crazy skin allergies, I have to use an SLS-free toothpaste or my mouth breaks out. I cannot use most fabric softener because they break my skin out. I *can* use the dryer sheets from Arm & Hammer, they seem to be fine.

 

What I wanted to say, however, is that many of these items are found in other common household and beauty items. Benzyl Alcohol is in most hair gels. Limonene is in *lots* of bath products, products you use directly on your skin and although it was once thought to be a carcinogen, studies have proven otherwise.

 

This sort of page is scare tactics with no science behind them.

And Benzyl acetate comes from ylang-ylang, which is a commonly used essential oil used in aromatherapy.

[PrincessAriel]

I have no idea about the dangers to humans but when we bought our new washer/dryer a few months ago, they told us not to use dryer sheets. They can leave a coating on the inside of the dryer and cause problems affecting the mechanical workings or something to that affect. I am still getting used to using liquid again. I agree these types of warnings are to get you to buy a certain product. I was "warned" about dishwasher detergent and bought some of the natural product.....it didn't clean them very well at all and was very expensive. It's always something...:confused:

[MommyX8]

I think that the big manufacturers actually have a scent added that is basically additive. Keeps you coming back.

[angela in ohio]

What's funny is that the same people who avoid all 'chemicals' are generally into using essential oils, where they are putting high doses of these same compounds (linalool, a-turpineol, etc.) on their skin or breathing them in, like Perry mentioned. Most of these are naturally occuring, and you can ingest or inhale large amounts of many things (or overdose an insect or rat with it) and find that they are harmful.

[mom31257]

I have never used either. I don't like to put any sort of chemical on my skin or clothing that is not necessary.

 

Can I ask how you control the static from the dryer?

[asta]

My sibling's family has no dryer and 3 out of 5 of them has cancer. No Downey, either.

 

Static will appear any time there is a non-natural fiber present. No way around it. You can try those "dryer balls" or anything else, and you will still have static if you have non-natural fibers - a dryer is an electrical device (even the gas ones).

 

 

a

Edited January 28, 2010 by asta

[Frontier Mom]

Thanks so much. I had never even heard them questioned until last night at church while having a casual conversation. I usually buy the perfume free ones if I find them, but lately I've been buying mine at Aldi's. Seems there is nothing to be scared of, just seems something new comes out every day or so that is supposedly harmful, while always supplying a new product to replace this really bad one.

 

Just wondered if I was missing something here. In the south, I'm a fabric softener user!!

[dirty ethel rackham]

We don't use them because they can coat the towels and make them less absorbent. We use plain vinegar as a fabric softener. Since fabric softeners coat the fibers, they are artificially soft. With vinegar, they are reasonably soft and static free (unless I overdry them.) I react to the ingredients in most fabric softeners sold in stores. Plus, the scents actually bother me and give me headaches. (I don't think they give me cancer, but I am on the use less stuff kick:)). The only one I have tried that hasn't bothered me is a Melaleuca product, but I don't have the $$$ to buy that when vinegar is soo much cheaper.

 

And, no, our clothes do not smell of vinegar:).

[Heather in OK]

I don't use them either. Mainly to just eliminate chemical usage in our home. I also make my own laundry detergent.

 

I use vinegar, water, and baking soda for fabric softener. I put it in a Downy fabric softener ball and toss in the washer.

 

The recipe is:

8 C water

6 C vinegar

1 C baking soda

essential oil (optional)

 

I mix the water and vinegar in a gallon jug. Then VERY slowly add the baking soda. The kids love watching this part. ;) Sometimes I'll add just a few drops of peppermint EO to give it a little scent (which doesn't come through in the clothes...I just like the way it smells..lol).

[Frontier Mom]

I don't use them either. Mainly to just eliminate chemical usage in our home. I also make my own laundry detergent.

 

I use vinegar, water, and baking soda for fabric softener. I put it in a Downy fabric softener ball and toss in the washer.

 

The recipe is:

8 C water

6 C vinegar

1 C baking soda

essential oil (optional)

 

I mix the water and vinegar in a gallon jug. Then VERY slowly add the baking soda. The kids love watching this part. ;) Sometimes I'll add just a few drops of peppermint EO to give it a little scent (which doesn't come through in the clothes...I just like the way it smells..lol).

 

Thanks!! I just got the ingredients to make my own laundry soap so I might try this as well!!

[Guest janainaz]

Eeek! I use vinegar and baking soda to clean my house and I never considered what is in dryer sheets!

 

My son has horrible eczema, too. I've stopped using certain brands of dryer sheets in the past because I suspected they were causing flare-ups. I'm just going to stop using them altogether.

 

 

 

Thanks for the info.

[ThatCyndiGirl]

I think that the big manufacturers actually have a scent added that is basically addictive. Keeps you coming back.

 

 

 

:lol:

[Guest Katia]

I, too, have bad reactions to commercial fabric softeners, both liquid and dryer sheets. I break out in rashes similar to ring worm under any area where the skin rubs together, and it takes forever to clear it up.

 

It also took me forever to figure out that it was the fabric softeners causing the problem. I started using just vinegar as a rinse on my towels because fabric softener makes them so much less absorbent. As a money saving measure, I started using just vinegar in our underclothes and socks loads, just using commercial fabric softener on our outside clothing.

 

Immediately I stopped breaking out and I didn't have any more breakouts until one day when someone gave me a bottle of fabric softener and I used it. The next day I was red and itchy in 'those' areas again. The light clicked on......finally.

 

So, now I use white vinegar with some lavender essential oil mixed in. It works wonderfully well, smells great, is much, much cheaper, and I have not broken out at.all.

 

I don't know about cancer, but I do know the chemicals in commercial fabric softeners do not need to be sinking into my or my family's skin all day long. We much prefer the white vinegar rinse.

[Tree House Academy]

Aw heck, doesn't everything cause cancer these days?

[Mabeline]

Vinegar and Baking soda cancel each other out. When mixed they combine to make carbon dioxide gas and water.

You can use plain vinegar in a downey ball and it works great. The smell is gone when the clothes are dry. HTH.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 29, 2010 by Mabeline
to add picture

[funschooler5]

Thanks to a tip from the boards, I switched from dryer sheets to putting liquid fabric softener on an old washcloth (or old clean socks) and throwing it in the dryer with the load of clothes. I only put a tiny amount on the cloth/sock and I'm able to use them over and over again (without adding more liquid on them). The clothes stay soft, and they barely have any scent on them (I do use a fairly mild scented softener, Snuggle Jojoba Essence). It's a great use for our unending pile of mis-matched socks.

[Pretty in Pink]

I don't use fabric softener at all, but it's in the interest of thrift, not because of the information shared in by OP. I recently began making my own detergent as well, maybe two months ago, and have had no issues with static cling. A PP mentioned that static develops in artificial fibers though and we own very few of those. Now that I type that, my ds's track shorts do get static, but they are probably polyester. I'm big on cotton personally; manmade fibers feel icky to me.

[asta]

Vinegar and Baking soda cancel each other out. When mixed they combine to make carbon dioxide gas and water.

You can use plain vinegar in a downey ball and it works great. The smell is gone when the clothes are dry. HTH.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It cracks me up that you put a chem equation on the board.

 

:001_smile:

 

 

a

[MyThreeSons]

I don't know about toxic, but I know that if you read the fine print on many dryer sheet boxes, you'll see that there is a possibility of them causing rust-like spots to appear on the clothes. They do often wash out, but who wants to have to re-wash clothes?

 

Years ago, I switched to using white vinegar in the rinse cycle of my washer. It leaves the clothes smelling fresh (NOT like vinegar at all!!) and feeling SOOOO soft. It does absolute wonders on bath towels -- actually restores their absorbency, which is taken away by dryer sheets.

 

I buy the vinegar in the big jugs at Sam's Club.

[Melissa in Australia]

What's funny is that the same people who avoid all 'chemicals' are generally into using essential oils, where they are putting high doses of these same compounds (linalool, a-turpineol, etc.) on their skin or breathing them in, like Perry mentioned. Most of these are naturally occuring, and you can ingest or inhale large amounts of many things (or overdose an insect or rat with it) and find that they are harmful.

 

 

my husband has 'Chemical Sensitivity" we avoid as many chemicals as we can. we have no end of trouble trying to tell people that " natural ' things like essential oils etc are just as bad for him.

 

 

I line dry all my laundry. it is way cheaper than a clothes dryer.

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

When I read this thread, I realized that we don't have static cling any more, and I've never used fabric softener.

 

I think it is because I dry my clothes differently than I used to. When the cold weather started I didn't want to hang them out any more, so I tried to think of a way to use my dryer more efficiently. I experimented and found that using the timed setting meant the dryer was running far less time than when I had it on one of the automatic settings.

 

The optimum time to dry a load of our clothes is 50 minutes, less for smaller loads. This takes my clothes to the point of just being dry and not over dry. The only drawback is not having a nice warm fuzzy load of clothes to fold. :-)

[chiguirre]

I use vinegar too. It's cheap and it keeps my front loader smelling fresh while it softens clothes. You can't beat that!

[MelanieM]

I don't care what the research says, because I can tell for myself that this stuff is toxic. I can't walk by a house that is venting from a dryer and using fabric softener without practically hacking up a lung. Any prolonged contact and it makes my nose burn, to the point that it's raw inside.

 

Even if I didn't have physical reactions, I still wouldn't want it around me. You can smell it like a cloud around everyone that uses the stuff and comes near you. It is near impossible to wash the smell and feel out of clothes that have come into contact with the stuff. Really, if you use scented fabric softener or Febreeze <shudder>, it is an overpowering smell that is noticable by anyone around you that doesn't use the stuff. One of the kids in our neighbourhood smells so much like fabric softener that I have to leave the room when he comes to visit, because it makes me so ill. And when my kids go down the street to visit friends that use air fresheners, they have to change their clothes when they come home because they smell of it so strongly.

 

Besides, it's really unnecessary.

 

We never have issues with static because we don't use synthetic fibres. The occasional fleece jacket or pair of nylons gets hung to dry rather than tossed into the dryer with everything else. No issues.

Edited January 29, 2010 by MelanieM

[Aretemama]

I tried one of the homemade laundry soap recipes that was on the board maybe two months or so ago under a 'save money' thread. I've noticed that we don't need softener with this soap. A couple of my kids have extremely sensitive skin and so far so good. Although, I have to say, wow, does this soap smell bad from the fels naptha bar. I'm really surprised that the clothes come out with almost no scent at all and we've had no bad skin reactions.

 

Aretemama

[justamouse]

I use green dryer sheets because 1. we have skin allergies and 2. I am highly against the optic brighteners put in the softeners. They are horrible for the water.

 

I also make my own detergent using the recipe from the Duggars site (the fels-naptha soap).

[Perry]

I am highly against the optic brighteners put in the softeners. They are horrible for the water.

 

They are in softeners? I knew they were in some detergents, but I didn't think they were in dryer sheets. Off to google....

[catalinakel]

Can I ask how you control the static from the dryer?

 

I ignore it. I have never ever used any of that stuff, so I don't know the difference.

[Sputterduck]

I don't use them, but I have never needed to. I've never had a static problem.

[catalinakel]

I don't use fabric softener at all, but it's in the interest of thrift, not because of the information shared in by OP. I recently began making my own detergent as well, maybe two months ago, and have had no issues with static cling. A PP mentioned that static develops in artificial fibers though and we own very few of those. Now that I type that, my ds's track shorts do get static, but they are probably polyester. I'm big on cotton personally; manmade fibers feel icky to me.

 

This explains why I generally have no issues with static cling. I hate synthetic fabrics, and so there are very few in my laundry....

[Mabeline]

:blush: I guess i am just more visual and I wasn't sure if my comment was clear. :D

[Tap]

It is funny to me that so many people say they can't smell the vinegar scent on clothes but can smell the chemicals.

 

I can smell both, my dd and dh can smell both. I use vinegar for most things but use a small amount of fabric softener on others.

 

I can also smell the vinegar smell on other people, so it isn't just that I know which clothes were washed which way. In fact dh hates the smell of vinegar so much, that he doesn't want his clothes or towels washed in it. I do periodically, due to various reasons, and even though he doesn't know when I do it, he can tell from the scent.

[asta]

OK - I just washed a load with that vinegar in downey ball thing and DS's two silky high performance shirts came out completely non-staticy.

 

I'm sold.

 

And they don't smell like anything, either. I'm miss super nose, too.

 

 

a

[mirth]

Static will appear any time there is a non-natural fiber present. No way around it. You can try those "dryer balls" or anything else, and you will still have static if you have non-natural fibers - a dryer is an electrical device (even the gas ones).

 

 

Am I reading your statement wrong? Because I'm sitting here thinking that hair is a natural fiber and there can be plenty of static in that! Static is just accumulation of net charge (an unstable condition -- google "grain silo static explosion" for proof), and is frequently generated by friction. You don't really need any electrical appliances to generate static. If you rub a glass rod with a piece of silk, the rod can deflect a stream of water flowing from the tap.

 

I have never used fabric softener. I don't perceive static-y (staticky?) clothes as any sort of nuisance for us. Besides, f.s. would really mess up my microfiber towels!

[mom2abcd]

You really don't need any sort of fabric softener. I used to use vinegar in a Downy ball, but found going without anything was just as well.

 

I don't know about the natural fibers/non-natural ones. I do find that our few nylon socks or whatever have static cling, but it's no big deal.

 

We use the big box of Surf from Sam's Club. I used to make my own detergent, but found that it wasn't cost effective.

[asta]

Am I reading your statement wrong? Because I'm sitting here thinking that hair is a natural fiber and there can be plenty of static in that! Static is just accumulation of net charge (an unstable condition -- google "grain silo static explosion" for proof), and is frequently generated by friction. You don't really need any electrical appliances to generate static. If you rub a glass rod with a piece of silk, the rod can deflect a stream of water flowing from the tap.

 

I have never used fabric softener. I don't perceive static-y (staticky?) clothes as any sort of nuisance for us. Besides, f.s. would really mess up my microfiber towels!

 

Oh, of course you're right - I'm thinking of how, when you rub across polyester carpet, you'll zap right away, but if you rub across a cotton rug, no you won't.

 

A dryer is just giving more of a charge in my mind, and when we "add in" something that attracts those charges (say, my son's silky poly shirts) the result is overkill static.

 

When I line dry those same shirts? No static. Unfortunately, the humidity is normally very high where I live.

 

The whole exploding flour mills thing has always fascinated me, though...

 

 

a

[mom4him]

At church last night, someone mentioned how toxic dryer sheets and fabric softeners are to the body. Somehow, I've never heard of this. So, I did a google search and there is lots of info. about this on the web. Here is just one article I found.

 

Toxic Danger

 

So my ?, do you still use these and if not, what do you use instead to soften and control static cling? My son has eczema and this might make his skin better.

NO! I haven't used fabric softener in any form for several years. If I need a fabric softener for some reason I use white vinegar and no your clothes do not come out smelling like a pickle. We have gone to all natural fabrics for our clothes so I really don't need a softener very often.

I get sick around other people that use fabric softeners. At times it is very difficult for me to be outside as we have a neighbor that uses a very strong one. They are right up there with perfumes and colognes for me.

[MamaBearTeacher]

Fabric softeners and air fresheners make me feel nauseous. I have to avoid people who use them. It bothers me when you can smell it coming out of people's houses too. I think more and more people will become intolerant of them in years to come and they will become politically incorrect along with heavy perfumes. I would be surprised if some years down the line they are not found to contribute in some way to cancer or hormone disruption. I have mostly cotton clothes. If my fleece or acrylic gets staticky I just shake it slightly and the problem is gone.

[mcconnellboys]

I have a lot of auto-immune problems, including some eczema (not bad), psoriasis, etc. Years ago, when I was in my 20's, doctors told me that there were chemical particles on dryer sheets that got into the inside of the dryer and onto clothes for months after even using one sheet, one time. They thought these might be related to vaginal infections I was having at that time. I discontinued use of them and cleaned out the inside of my dryer. I've never used them since.

 

Now, I don't really use anything for static. We try to wear mostly all cotton clothing, so I don't really need anything very often. There are some new products out now that I've seen in area health food stores, both dryer sheet style things, as well as sprays, that purport to be natural. I haven't really looked closely at them to see what they contain.