Picture this: a normal day at the commercial laundry facility, with clothes stored in bins or carts, and then—unexpectedly—a fire breaks out. This isn't just a rare fluke; it's a dangerous reality caused by spontaneous combustion. You might be wondering how something as mundane as laundry could ignite a blaze. The culprits? Substances like oils, grease, and cleaning products present in laundry.

Curious about how this happens and how you can prevent it? Keep reading to discover the science behind spontaneous combustion in laundry fires and the Quanturi  key solution to keep your operation safe.

Laundry items such as tea towels, bed sheets and other textiles are left in the pile causing a natural phenomenon spontaneous combustion to ignite the fire. Cleveland Fire Brigade stated that risk of commercial laundry fires are increasing due to a phenomenon occurring when dried laundry piled for re-use. According to the U.S. Fire Administration’s National Fire Incident Reporting System and the National Fire Protection Association’s annual survey, From 2010–2014, U.S. fire departments responded to an average of 15,970 home fires annually involving clothes dryers or washing machines, causing 13 deaths, 440 injuries, and $238 million in property damage each year

This type of laundry fires occur when dirty laundry contaminated with grease, oil, etc are stacked or piled up heavily. These substances oxidize and release heat in tightly packed stacked laundry and cause spontaneous combustion to ignite laundry fires. This risk is higher in your laundry room when high cotton fabrics such as linens are left in piles, especially if they are damp and contaminated with oil, grease or other chemical substances.

To completely remove oil and other combustible elements from laundry, the temperature should be high during wash. Even after a wash, especially at lower temperature there is a possibility of some of the particles remaining inside clothes. If laundry is not adequately cooled before being folded or stacked, residual heat can build up in the surrounding environment. This trapped heat can cause any remaining contaminants to oxidize further, eventually reaching a temperature that leads to spontaneous ignition and fires.

Laundry fires also happen due to lint, laundry chute, electric circuits, absence of ventilation and monitoring, excessive dosage of detergent with high or low temperature, and human errors of not cleaning and putting laundry into the surfaces which are prone to ignite etc.