[creek14]

Restoring appearance and removing smoke odor from clothing

Soiled clothing is cleaned by a variety of laundry methods; neither can all fire damaged clothing could be cleaned equally as well by the same method. Sort fire damaged clothing as you would sort any soiled clothing by the recommended care method (found on the permanent care label), color and degree of soil.

Some clothing may require dry cleaning because of fiber content, dyes used in the fabric or incompatibility of fabrics such as linings and face fabrics. In some cases, these articles may be subjected to a careful wetcleaning process, even though they are labeled dry clean only. This can be done only with professional expertise when it is felt that the garment will not be wearable unless another process is used.

Sort washable clothing by color (light/medium/dark) and soil (light/moderate/heavy). The majority of clothing items will probably be cottons, polyesters, and polyester/cotton blends. These can be most effectively renewed by using a warm water wash with either a non-built liquid detergent (EraTM) or a low phosphate powder detergent and a liquid chlorine bleach (AllTM and CloroxTM). This recommendation is based on the research findings of Cloud, Bondurant and Keith at Louisiana State University in their study of removing smoke damage from apparel fabrics.

The tests were carried out under laboratory conditions and were evaluated after an equivalent of five home launderings. Therefore, it may not be possible to reach the desired state of color restoration or whiteness after one or two washings. But visibly smoke damaged clothing should be restored after five launderings.