Study: Perc remains in dry-cleaned clothes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-perc-remains-in-dry-cleaned-clothes/2011/09/01/gIQAbiPsxJ_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-perc-remains-in-dry-cleaned-clothes/2011/09/01/gIQAbiPsxJ_story.html
"Like many memorable science fair projects, it began with a startlingly simple idea: Find out what chemicals remain in dry-cleaned clothing. But the problem facing 15-year-old Alexa Dantzler was that she didn't have access to the proper equipment to pull off the experiment. So, like many teenagers, the sophomore at Bishop O'Connell High School in Arlington County went online. She e-mailed three or four chemistry professors across the country asking for help. Only Paul Roepe, then-chairman of Georgetown University's chemistry department, seemed intrigued. He took on the research "for fun," he said. But what started out as something to "sponsor the kid's curiosity" prompted a chain reaction in the university lab: an e-mail exchange, an invitation to collaborate and, this week, a paper published online in a peer-reviewed environmental journal. The paper gives new details about the amount of a toxic chemical that lingers in wool, cotton and polyester clothing after it is dry-cleaned."
