OT: alcohol based perfume removal?

Not sure where you heard that detergents have fragrances that are not water soluble. I suppose it is theoretically possible, but it would not disperse evenly in the wash and would not be applied evenly to the articles in the wash.

Do you know the names of any of these fragrances?

I buy laundry detergents without perfume or color. I think the brand is All. I find the scent from soaps and fabric softener to be cloying and clogs my sense of smell. I'm happy with no scent. I find antiperspirants to be similar, but I can't find them without any scent, however some are rather mild.

It is hard to imagine any scent (other than Eau de Pew) that won't depart sheets and clothing hanging on the line for a day.

What makes you think these substances are actually "toxic"?

You would think if they wash in with water, they'd wash out too. But they are designed not to.

Tide has one. A quick search of the patent office will show you several of them.

Here is Tide selling it separately:

And appreciated buy those around you with breathing problems and those that love them more than you can ever imagine. Thank you!

I use 7th generation Free and Clear.

Where I get in trouble is sitting in other people's chairs that do use them. I get the crap all over me and my clothing.

And new cloths has finishes with them. The gift that keeps on giving

Folks in my family gasping in terror trying to breath. Also the MSDS sheets when you can find them.

There are lots of fragrances listed at

You can try entering a CAS number here

If you put any type of alcohol in your washing machine, you will soon be in need of your local fire department. I suppose you could try to soak the clothes in something like isopropyl alcohol in a bucket outside, and then hang them up outside for the IPA to evaporate before washing in plain water. It won't be cheap, though.

Perhaps repeated cycles in a tumble drier (*NOT* after washing in IPA!) would "flush" the clothes of their unwanted fragrances. If the clothes will stand it, try repeated washings at a much higher temperature than usual.

On the principle that like dissolves like, if water doesn't dissolve these scents, try dry cleaning. If water does dissolve 'em, but they diffuse slow, a long soak (bucket of water, immerse for a day before laundering) can be useful. Use distilled water and a little wetting agent (Woolite?).

Sometimes alkali (washing soda) can be added to a wash load, if you want more variables to play with.

I also suffer badly from this. I have had a fleece hanging in the attic for several months waiting for the stink to disperse. It seems too good to throw away, but I doubt if I shall ever be able to wear it. Sometimes leaving the clothes on an outdoor washing line in showery weather, so that they get alternately wet and dry for several days, will reduce the smell.

Definitely avoid washing them with other clothes, as the perfume will contaminate them too. Sometimes the perfumes only come out with body heat, so always wash 'new' (including secondhand) clothes separately in case they are contaminated but the smell isn't obvious at room temperature.

Other items, such as books, have arrived contaminated. I have sealed them up and returned them for a full refund as they were "not of the quality demanded".

In my opinion, these chemicals should be banned outright because we have no way of avoiding them. (Some are already banned as known carcinogens and other toxins, but the manufacturers are under no obligation to list the ingredients in perfumes. so they just go on using them.)

I don't know where you write from, so the washing machines used here might be different than yours.

In my experience, it is not the detergent which carries the perfume, but the fabric softener that the machine uses on the last rinse cycle.

So, besides the perfume there is the softener itself that is intended to stay on the clothes, thus it is used on the last rinse so that it is not washed away. It is water soluble.

The obvious solution is simply to not add a softener to the machine - our machines have 4 receptacles: pre-wash, wash, bleach, and softener.

I am going to respond to my original post with what does not work and what sort-of works

I suppose it would help if I posted what does not work and what sort-of-works.

First though a guess on what is happening. Most folks without skin irritations to detergents seldom rise all the soap out of their cloths. If these chemicals are wax based, they may "melt" into the fibers in the dryer or the hot water of the washer.

What DOES NOT work on old and new cloths:

-- 7th Generation cloth washing detergent

-- 7th Generation Dish detergent

-- Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda)

-- Sodium Carbonate (washing soda)

-- Oxi/Oxo (Sodium Carbonate & Sodium Percarbonate)

-- White Vinegar

-- Extremely hot water

-- EnviroKlenz

What sort-of works on old cloths (that pick it up by me sitting in peoples chairs):

-- Sodium Percarbonate

BUTTTTTT it takes extremely hot water, tons of Sodium Percarbonate, and T-E-N washings.

ANDDDDDDD it fills the house with toxic perfumes that almost makes the house uninhabitable to those with breathing issues

New cloths (fabric finishes):

-- Sodium Percarbonate

AND it takes two to four washings a week F-O-R A Y-E-A-R !!!! The cloths are 1/2 worn out before you an use them.

ANDDDDDDD it also fills the house with toxic perfumes that almost makes the house uninhabitable to those with breathing issues

Dry cleaning might help depending on the particular substance, but it may not impact the scent much at all. Dry cleaning uses organic solvents that are hydrophobic and do not dissolve the same substances as water with detergents. But it's worth a try.

The devil is in the details.

You talk about picking it up from other people's furniture, but don't you smell that as soon as you enter the room or sit in the chair?

I'm presently living in Airbnb places for a couple of weeks at a time. I often walk into an apartment only to find it has been fumigated with these sorts of scents. Sometimes I can't sleep in the bed right away. I think this is mostly fabric softeners, but sometimes they add special scents to the place when cleaning or even have those plug in fresheners.

To people who aren't sensitive, all these scents smell good. To the rest of us it's not a lot different from spreading the smell of feces or decaying flesh. Some scents are barely noticeable and not offensive to me, like in the antiperspirants I use. I wonder why they use the scents that are much stronger and easily offend. I guess it's still a tiny minority who are sensitive and what sells, sells.

Some of the so-called 'fresheners' are just as bad as the perfumes for triggering allergies.

You might get better answers in sci.chem than here. At least there it will be on topic. You may struggle to find a way to defeat the systems in modern detergents. Most of the scents used today are not especially toxic unless you are a hypochondriac. Some of them make me sneeze.

Your best bet is to buy hypoallergenic or equivalently fragrance free products rather than trying to denature the chemistry of standard off the shelf products. Someone spent a lot of time and effort making molecules that bind well to fabrics and then slowly release again.

I have never come across them, but I am in the UK and they may not be on sale here. Most things here with 'Fresh' on the labels are toxic as hell.

I doubt if you will get anything other than a bland statement that their products are fine or only contain 'natural' ingredients (such as D-Limonene, oxalic acid, tannin and aconitine?).

I'm remembering some of my organic chemistry which I took at Hood College, formally an all girls school. Esters are made of a reaction of an alcohol and an acid, each of which has an aliphatic group (simple hydrocarbon). The resulting ester often has a very strong aroma. I want to say we had a lab where we each made a different ester, some were a very nice scent such as banana, but the starting ingredients can be quite foul such as butyric acid.

I don't think there would be anything special about esters in terms of hanging onto clothing when washed. But then I recall having trouble getting the funk out of clothes when used for kayaking. That would likely be the butyric acid. Probably just a degree of amount, but possibly there is something created by microbes while waiting to be washed that makes the scent hang. You have to consider there can be agents added specifically to make the scent hang to the clothing. I believe they add compounds to perfumes just for that purpose.

Not sure what you're after here, but if you want a laundry detergent itself with no extra smells of any type added, look at the lineup from Atsko. The no UV hunting detergent and sport wash are the same product with different labelling. Nothing else comes close to just being detergent with no additives. The stuff has virtually no odor even if you smell from the jug itself. It also leaves no weird residues on washed clothing. It's perfect for hypochondriacs or people who just need rags with no residue on them.

Sorry you've become so sensitive. I have no help to offer you.

For other folk here: residual soap is a problem, even with low-irritant, low-perfume or low-allergenic washing soaps. I found that I get a persistent rash (like, 3mo of steroid creams to remove) under my sox or undies from residual soap. It takes a few days for the rash to come up.

We adopted the practise of putting vinegar in the rinse aid/fabric treatment section of the washer, and the problem vanished. Better than fabric treatment products, which didn't work for me.

If you get similar symptoms, you might find that helps you too.

CH

Of course. I am a computer consultant. I have to enter their rooms and sit in their chairs or my family will starve.

Oh and the exhaust from their dryers after using fabric softeners pollutes the air in the neighborhood too

Oh I do not know about "tiny". Just under 20% of the population has breathing issues of one type or another. Asthma especially.

No fooling!