Nephew is in a residential probation program designed to educate and encourage non-violent offenders to become productive members of society. On the list of contraband is “fabric softener in sheet form.” Why?
[Moderating]
A preemptive reminder: Don’t give instructions on how to break the law. Saying “It’s used in the production of X” is acceptable. Saying precisely how one uses it would not be.
Maybe someone will come along with some chemistry knowledge I don’t have but as far as I know it’s not used in production. In various ways it can be used to mask the smell of drug use.
See: bounce blower
Most interesting. Funny the guys deodorized their money! Thanks.
Using fabric softener? Does that mean he… laundered the money?
It could be a concern about arson. Fabric softener sheets are very flammable.
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner!
**Why would fabric softener sheets be prohibited in a jail/rehab program?
**
Fabric softener sheets are great for masking odor. If you are allowed a fan in your room/cell you can place the sheet over the fan. If you have no fan, you can place the sheet near where the A/C or heat comes into the room.
I’m tried to find some other cite than the many wootastic links about the many and extreme evils of dryer sheets. IIRC correctly from someone I knew who was asthmatic, they could be a trigger for asthma attack. I’ve got some skin reactions to many laundry fragrances. Potentially there’s some allergy issues for those breathing strong fragrances from dryer sheets. To the extent those are true, I could see banning them based on the health effects of a large population living in close proximity.
Watching LivePD it’s not uncommon to find people with weed in their vehicles to have fabric softener sheets in their car to try to hide the odor.
I have some smoker friends, who say that they take a paper towel empty tube and close one end with a fabric softener sheet. They then smoke and exhale into this tube and the smoking odors are masked / filtered by the sheet.
According to this recovery community site,
Yes called a bounce blower in post #3. That’s the only reason I can see why a rehab would forbid it.
Wow. I did not know this.
It doesn’t seem a particularly bonne idée to have “very flammable” items in an appliance that runs on natural gas and has the potential to generate sparks because a big metal tub is constantly spinning against who knows how many friction points.
Not to mention static electricity spark potential. (And yes, I know, you all told me not to mention it 
).
I knew someone who did that from Chicago to LA in a sleeper car on Amtrak. I know this person really, really, really well.
Which is all interesting.
But how does it work?
Best guess is that the sheet is acting as a tiny electrostatic precipitator and is capturing the majority of the smoke. But I’m not convinced. I can’t really imagine that a tiny bit of fragrance added to most sheets would mask the odour.
You really don’t have to get high tech about it. Several sheets in tandem could be used in the production of a garrote.
So could cloth/thread from anywhere: clothing, bedding, etc. You can even do wonders with TP.
Liquid fabric softener can make clothes more flammable but dryer sheets don’t.
I do see web sites claiming that dryer sheets compromise children’s sleepwear that are flame-retardant, but every site with such a claim is a “chemicals are bad, be more green” blog-style site so I take that with a grain of (organic) salt. They may be confusing caution about liquid fabric softeners with dryer sheets, or just pushing woo. It’s hard to tell.
I see nothing (reliable or unreliable) claiming that the sheets themselves are highly flammable, and I doubt that they’d be safe for public use if they were. They’re going into a high heat appliance after all.