how to decontaminate a dryer

If you're looking for how to simply get synthetic fragrance chemicals out of your dryer, this is going to be overkill. You can probably just scrub the drum, even the fins, and potentially soak any badly affected plastic (probably the lint screen) in vinegar, so cherry pick from the following:

Today we're going to document for posterity the appropriate way to decontaminate a tumble dryer that has had bad air (smoke, for example) sucked through it.

1. Order new drum seals because they typically take a few days to come in, and then you have to boil them about 4 times. Maybe 'seals' isn't their official name, but I'm talking about the felt padding that the drum rides on. If you have weak contamination, maybe you can boil the contaminant out of them, but it takes a lot less boiling to get the 'new' out of new ones than it does to get the crap out of old ones. Trying to save yourself $60 by boiling the old ones for a month is not at all worth it.
2. Take the case apart until you can take out the drum. With the drum out, take out the screws that hold the fin-thingies in place. Find something like a plastic storage tub where you can soak the fins in vinegar for at least 24 hours. 50:50 vinegar and water works fine.
3. Continue disassembling the case until you can reach every surface in the air stream. You don't have to worry as hard about the air stream after it leaves the drum, but those surfaces can ooze contamination backward when the dryer is off, so at least get the ones close to the lint filter.
4. Throw out the heating element. You can't scrub it with Bon Ami, and you can't soak it in vinegar. We can get new ones for our machine on Ebay for about $25, or if you're excited about having it right away, you can pay something like $70 for one at the local appliance place.
5. Commence scrubbing all the exposed surfaces with a Bon Ami paste if the contamination is really stubborn. You can get away with a scrubby sponge and less Bon Ami on less contaminated surfaces. If you have a tube you can't get your arm in, try a brush. We extended the handle on a toilet brush using plastic water pipe. We had to cut the brush's handle at the correct diameter to fit in the pipe (allow extra length so you can taper the brush handle), but wedged in there, it's pretty solid.

Theoretically when all the boiling, soaking, and scrubbing is done, you can just put the whole works back together. Here are some things that could slow you down:

• The bare metal sleeves around the heating element and on the way to the drum are some kind of metal that leaves a taste in my mouth, so you can't necessarily get those parts perfect.
• The seals on my dryer very likely have wool in them. I will probably never be able to sniff those without getting heart palpitations, but I can tell the difference between a wool reaction and a dryer contaminant.

And so you aren't left wondering what might kill you next, there's a giant DDT deposit off the coast of Los Angeles.