Unlicensed laundries in Dalian pose health risks
Print Edition
UNLICENSED laundries in Dalian were found using banned industrial chemicals to wash hotel and hospital linens, thus posing health risks, a CCTV report claimed yesterday.
Hotels in the port city in northeast China have been using illegal washhouses to cut costs. The report said that the laundries replaced safe surfactants and addictives with acid and alkali like sodium hydroxide, oxalic acid and hydrogen peroxide.
The industrial materials were then mixed to make the detergent. The chemical residues can cause skin allergies and rash, the China Central TV report said.
On the camera, hotel linens — bed sheets, quilt covers and towels — can be seen piled up on the ground in a warehouse-looking underground washhouse. Washing powders — a mixture of industrial materials — were placed in chemical barrels.
“I wash linens for more than 60 hotels,” a worker in the illegal laundry told CCTV.
The report, quoting an anonymous source, said it was common for them to use strong acid and alkali to wash linens, which were faster and looked whiter. “They are our nuclear weapons,” he said.
Local chemical plants were equally guilty of conspiring in the act. The CCTV reporter introduced himself as a laundry owner to a female worker at the Dalian Deweilong Chemicals Co Ltd and got oxalic acid with no questions asked.
She offered to introduce people who make detergents to the undercover reporter.
Even more shocking was the fact that some of the used linens were not even properly washed. Workers just threw the linens into water and then dried them if they looked reasonably white. Others were said to mix hospital gowns and sheets with the hotel linens.
The CCTV report said that the laundries needed to clean up their acts.
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