Plastic Pants Wound Up In Dryer

[AbriForm]

While doing a load of cloth diapers, a lone pair of plastic pants that I missed wound up in the dryer.

(In case you don't know, plastic pants aren't supposed to go in the dryer, and never beyond tumble mode).

The diapers look fine, but I'm concerned that they may have absorbed some of the plastic (my dryer was running on hot... I'd like to run it on warm... but I don't have a warm setting on this klunker).

Any ideas/experience on what I should do? Should I run the diapers through the wash a couple of times, or throw them out? There were only a couple in there, and I'd rather be safe than sorry.

[messyman]

Unless there is melted plastic pants stuck to them I don't think you wrecked anything.

[justindiapers]

As far as I know, the reason why you're not supposed to put plastic pants in the dryer is because it makes the plastic pants hard and brittle. Like messyman said, as long as there's no melted plastic on the diapers, then you shouldn't have hurt anything.

[Angela Bauer]

First of all, there are kinds of plastic pants intended to be washed with diapers in hospital/commercial machines and also dried with those cloth diapers.

One such plastic is called "boilable vinyl" which was far more popular in the days when hospitals routinely used cloth diapers. Back in 1990 I absolutely loved such pants made by a defunked firm called ProHealth.

Babykins recommends running their soft vinyl pants in the drier to keep the vinyl soft and prevent cracking. I have done this since first buying those kind of plastic pants. I place the vinyl pants in a old all-cotton pillowcase and run them along with a load of washed diapers for the first 20 minutes.

The fact one of your plastic pants got into the drier strongly suggests it got washed in the same load as diapers. Frankly the risk of leaching irritating chemicals from the plastic pants if far greater during the wash with typical diaper detergents that from the drier.

This is why so many manufacturers and I recomment hand washing plastic pants by themselves in luke warm water with a trace of mild liquid dishwashing detergent.