Question from jenbooks

Hi Debra, I am still having a great deal of trouble finding a nontoxic iron and wonder if others have had this issue. I know you say your Rowenta is fine. I’m at my wit’s end, because I have a small washer in my apartment and no dryer, and cannot use the dryers (or washers) in the laundry room as they use so much fabric softener and bounce dryer sheets.

My little washer is excellent and does small loads so I do frequent small loads.

My problem is ironing the clothes that air-dry. They get very wrinkled.

A new Black & Decker iron had a very bad chemical smell in the steam and a metal smell came off on my clothes. My boyfriend’s newish cheaper Black & Decker also has a chemical smell but he hasn’t used it much at all so it’s virtually new (I smell the inner solvents, glues, aluminum, plastics and I don’t know what else, coming off the steam). I purchased a 1991 Rowenta off of Ebay and did not love that smell but it was more familiar. I haven’t ironed with it though but I guess I will try today; I’m mortified of ruining clothes because I mostly have cotton and it absorbs things. It smelled sort of like “old lady iron” (she had gone into assisted living apparently). I tried a vintage 1940 iron but that was stupid, as it smelled of mothballs and whatever they cleaned it with to make it new and shiny and was the worst iron of all and I threw it out.

Now I have purchased but not received, a flat iron with no steam from Vermont Country store after googling all over the internet and finally finding it recommended on an MCS site.

Most irons are now made in China and I find a lot of stuff made there is plain old toxic. Who knows what they coat plastics with to make them resist heat. Who knows what glues and solvents they use.

Debra’s Answer

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