How to Get Clothes Clean?
It’s called “perc” -- the smelly solvent your clothes soak in when you take them to the dry cleaner. Although it has been removing stains and keeping clothes crisp for nearly 50 years, air quality officials are about to send it the way of leaded gasoline with the nation’s first proposed ban on the chemical.
The proposal has provoked a furious response from hundreds of cleaners and has consumers like Laura Boles of Northridge concerned about how it will affect her clothes, her pocketbook and the mom-and-pop Royalty Cleaners she frequents.
“Anything that’s good for the environment, I’m in favor of, but I need to know what it’s going to cost me,” said Boles, hoisting a row of wrapped plastic shirts into her car. “But I don’t want to put the little guys out of business. They have to make a living. It’s got to be right for everyone in terms of the environment, small business and cost to the consumer.”
Regulators and others give assurances that costs will be negligible and that there will be vast health benefits to workers and people living near dry cleaners. Each soy stain removed from a blouse or grease smudge lifted from a uniform releases a puff of toxic vapor, an assault on the environment that new technologies would remedy, they say.
Perchloroethylene, the colorless solvent used by 85% of dry cleaners in Southern California, poses an environmental threat to more than the atmosphere. It also is the No. 1 contaminant of ground water in Southern California, and some landlords won’t renew leases for dry cleaners because of liability concerns that perc may seep into groundwater.
Years of cutting down on the pollution has reduced the airborne risk. But now Southern California air quality officials want to phase out perc altogether over nearly 20 years. Industry groups nationwide are closely watching the matter because, as is often the case, steps that California takes to clean its dirty skies are copied nationwide.
“People don’t pay very much attention to the risk at dry cleaners. People understand they use some kind of solvent, but the general public is not aware dry cleaners are a problem,” said Elaine Chang, deputy executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
Garments are immersed in a solvent bath of perc (pronounced “perk”), releasing about 850 tons of emissions annually, air quality officials said. Dry cleaners swear by the chemical, which can cut through grease, blood and other tough stains.
“It’s fabulous. It has a combination of aggressively going after stains without damaging fabric,” said Jon Meijer, vice president of the International Fabricare Institute, which represents cleaners worldwide.
But unlike smog-forming chemicals, perc is a concern because it has been linked to cancer of the kidney, liver and breast. It also affects the central nervous system and can be absorbed through the lungs and into the bloodstream. It can contaminate breast milk. One recent study that traced 1,700 dry-cleaner workers found that the risk of dying of cancer was 25% greater for them than for other workers, said Avima Ruder, senior research epidemiologist for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Heath.
Dry cleaners emit about two-thirds of the perchloroethylene emissions across Los Angeles, Orange and much of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. A 2-year-old government study identifies perc as one of six major toxic air contaminants in the Southland. Fumes from dry cleaners that reach surrounding neighborhoods pose a cancer risk as much as eight times as great as is deemed acceptable by the air district.
Under the proposed regulation, dry cleaners would be prohibited from purchasing perchloroethylene machines after January 2003. In July 2004, all cleaning machines scheduled for replacement would have to switch to an alternative technology. By 2019, use of perchloroethylene would no longer be permitted at dry cleaners in the region.
It would be the longest lead time allowed for compliance under any Los Angeles-area air pollution control regulation. Officials said that would give the industry plenty of time to make the switch. They said switching is reasonable. There are many nontoxic, cost-effective alternatives to perc. The measure is one of the most ambitious anti-toxics regulations ever proposed for Southern California, although New York City and the Bay Area already have stringent controls on dry cleaners.
Action Delayed
The air district governing board is scheduled to consider the measure at its regular meeting on Nov. 1 in Diamond Bar. But action on the measure has been postponed many times this year because of vigorous opposition rooted in concerns both economic and cultural.
Air quality officials typically target major polluters, including oil refineries, manufacturers and automakers, but the dry-cleaning industry is overwhelmingly composed of small, family-run shops that see themselves as no match for powerful government bureaucrats.
Moreover, most of the 2,086 dry cleaners in the region are owned by Korean Americans, many of whom recently immigrated to the United States. Many said they do not appreciate what the fuss is about. Despite extensive use of translators, bilingual documents and extra public meetings in Koreatown and other ethnic communities, government and industry representatives have been unable to arrive at a regulation both sides can embrace.
“Korean immigrants, especially dry cleaners, see themselves as small fish who are being attacked by a big fish. So initially, they don’t even understand this government regulation, what is the value, so they just see this as an outrageous attack on small, mom-and-pop operations. They see it as unfair,” said Kayeyoung Park, professor of anthropology and Asian American studies at UCLA.
Opposition to the proposal has been vigorous and is not expected to subside by the time the air quality board meets in November. Dry cleaners, as many as 350 at a time, denounced the plan at raucous public workshops earlier in the year.
Paul Choe came from Seoul in 1975. He opened a dry cleaner in Lancaster after he lost his aerospace job at the end of the Cold War. He is the vice president of the Korean Dry Cleaners Assn. of Southern California and warns that the regulation “would hurt us badly.”
“It’s a life-threatening situation,” Choe said. “Most cleaners in California are owned by minorities, and those people came to the U.S.A. for the American dream. They’ve been working hard to support their family and children from the cleaners, but if this law passes, we’re going to have to spend a lot of money and some cleaners won’t have money to replace a new machine. Some of them are going to go out of business.”
In addition, the dry cleaners question why they are being regulated again after complying with rules that reduced emissions by 85% over the last decade. Many invested in new machines a few years ago and are not eager to spend thousands of dollars on newer equipment.
Instead, industry representatives advocate deeper reductions in emissions without banning perchloroethylene. The newest perc machines can cut solvent fumes by 40%, and their use is being advocated by industry groups, including Dow Chemical Co., Vulcan Materials Co. and PPG Industries Inc., which make perc.
Studies Questioned
“We don’t believe perc should be banned. We believe perc is a very safe solvent,” Meijer said. He said that studies linking the chemical to human cancer are questionable and that air quality officials overestimate the amount of fumes released by dry cleaners in the L.A. and surrounding regions.
Many dry cleaners point out that some alternative cleaning processes are more expensive too, including a machine that uses other types of solvents but costs as much as $90,000 -- about 25% more than a perc machine. That substitute also emits vapors: Although not toxic, its emissions contribute to smog, the air quality district said.
Air quality officials said the regulation could cost dry cleaners as much as $4.3 million annually, or about $2,525 per dry cleaner, if businesses choose the most expensive technology, which is considered unlikely. About 51 jobs would be lost annually, and consumers might pay slightly more for dry-cleaning services, according to the air quality district. The increased consumer prices would be less than a penny on the dollar.
“I think this is a good rule, in that it gives time to make the transition. There is technology out there now that is viable,” said Robert Gottlieb, director of the Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College. A 3-year research program at the school found that new technologies are available that can clean clothes efficiently and inexpensively without using toxic chemicals.
One promising method involves not dry cleaning at all, but “wet cleaning” with water-based cleansers that produce no toxic emissions. Tests show that system can cut energy costs by 45%, the machines cost less than perchloroethylene machines and they can treat virtually all modern fabrics.
However, wet-cleaning machines are computer-guided and a bit touchy to operate and clothes require more pressing. More than one-third of the dry cleaners in Germany have gone to wet cleaning, and 15% of the dry cleaners in the Bay Area use an alternative technology.
Other techniques use silicone-based cleansers and liquefied carbon dioxide to clean clothes. The district governing board, under a separate but related proposal, is scheduled to consider providing $2 million in grants to help dry cleaners shift to nontoxic methods.
Moon K. Noh has already made the change. After arriving from South Korea in 1958, he set up San Clemente Natural Cleaning Center, but eventually he grew weary of solvent fumes and regulations on perc.
“I don’t like the smell of the perc. You smell it on you, you have a headache pretty commonly. You open the machine and the fumes come out of there and the smells and all the coughing,” Noh said. “Now I use wet cleaning. My customers enjoy it, I enjoy it, and my employees enjoy it. I’m very happy and successful using it. Now I have no more headaches, and I’m free from that.”
