National Clothesline

As the day of reckoning drew near for a proposal to ban perc in Southern California, all sides in the debate were honing their arguments while the national news media was taking note of what would be the first-ever prohibition against perc in the United States.

A formal hearing of the proposal before the governing board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District was scheduled for Nov 1. But the informal hearing began in the news media several weeks earlier, starting with a widely circulated Associated Press report in late September. As October wore on, extensive articles appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, not to mention many smaller newspapers, as well as local and national television reports.

While the media attention was new, the issue itself was not. Industry leaders have been arguing and negotiating with SCAQMD for well over a year as the agency, which governs the four counties of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside, advanced its plan to phase out perc as an option for the more than 2,000 drycleaners under its authority.

The plan has been revised several times since it was introduced last year, but the end result — no more perc, period — remains the same. In its current form, the proposal would eliminate the possibility of using perc in any new drycleaning business after Jan 1, 2003. An existing drycleaner adding a new machine would have to use a non-perc alternative, too, after the first of the year.

After July, 1, 2004, any drycleaning machine that is replaced would have to use a non-perc alternative cleaning process. Also, any drycleaning machine that becomes 15 years old between that date and July 1, 2019 would have to be replaced with a non-perc machine.

In conjunction with its proposal to phase out perc, the air district staff is recommending financial assistance for drycleaners who are forced to buy new equipment. A cleaner could get a grant of $10,000 for switching to wetcleaning or carbon dioxide or a $5,000 grant for switching to hydrocarbon or silicone-based cleaning. The switch would have to be made before Jan. 1, 2004.

The air district is convinced that perc is a serious health hazard that needs to be abated.

“The average drycleaner poses a higher cancer risk to its neighbors than a typical oil refinery or power plant,” said Barry Wallerstein, executive officer of SCAQMD. The air district believes its new rule would eliminate 850 tons of perc emitted each year by drycleaners in the region.

Acknowledging that drycleaners have reduced perc emissions by 80 percent in the last decade, the air district says they still pose a relatively high cancer risk. The risk to residents and workers, SCAQMD says, ranges from about 20 to 140 in 1 million. Even if state-of-the art perc machines are used, the risk would still be in the 15 to 90 in 1 million range. SCAQMD says that compares to a risk from all industrial and commercial facilities in the region, including oil refineries, power plants and aerospace manufacturers of less than 10 in 1 million.

Industry trade groups strongly dispute SCAQMD’s facts and conclusions. SCAQMD’s perc phase-out plan has been contested at every turn by the California Cleaners Association, the International Fabricare Institute, the Korean Dry Cleaners Association of Southern California and the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance. The Neighborhood Cleaners Association has provided both financial and research support to the campaign.

Industry critics of the phase-out say the air district is exaggerating the amount of emissions from drycleaners and overstating any cancer risk those emissions might cause.

“California is the only state in the United States that designates perc as a supposed known human carcinogen, which is totally at odds with the evaluation of U.S. EPA’s independent Science Advisory Board… who feel that perc is neither a known carcinogen nor probable human carcinogen,” said IFI’s Bill Fisher.

Fisher said that the California Air Resources Board, unlike any other regulatory body in the U.S., uses mouse data instead of available human data so it can make its calculations of possible risk 12 times higher than any other U.S. agency.

“We don’t go around foolishly making claims that perc is definitely not a human carcinogen and we recognize that there are test results that fall on both sides of the ledger,” Fisher said. “But if you look at all of the information in total, we believe that it strongly indicates that perc is not a human carcinogen.

“South Coast is trying to raise hysteria by presenting only part of the evidence. What we think is needed are further scientifically credible tests — and that’s what should give the answer.”

Other government agencies that have looked at perc have come to conclusions different than those of SCAQMD, the trade associations point out. Most recently, the North Carolina Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch concluded in a report filed earlier this year that “There is no credible scientific evidence to support claims that perc or petroleum drycleaning solvents cause cancer in humans” nor do they pose a significant health risk to the general population.

The California Cleaners Association noted that both Health Canada and the United Kingdom Department of Health have reached the same conclusion.

Adding to the argument, the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance said that “the absence of consistent health findings is particularly striking since historical exposures to perc were likely to be significantly higher than current workplace levels and are on the order of 100,000 times greater than the predicted exposures among the general public.”

HSIA also took aim at SCAQMD’s estimates of perc emissions from drycleaners in the region. The air district assumes that air emissions equal 50 percent of perc consumption, but HSIA said that, based on a study by Tatch Technical Services, that figure is really in the 12 to 17 percent range.

The Tatch study was based on data on perc levels from inspection reports of 186 drycleaners in New York State, which HSIA said is “perhaps the largest review of drycleaning emissions ever conducted.”

HSIA said the Tatch study shows that the average emission rate from plants using fourth-generation equipment was below the rate necessary to exceed the stringent criteria for perc set by SCAQMD.

“South Coast has assumed that drycleaners would not be able to meet its perc limits, even with the newest equipment,” said Steve Risotto, executive director of HSIA. “This study provides substantial evidence that they can.”

Tatch reviewed data from inspection reports collected by the Neighborhood Cleaners Association over the past 12 months. Annual inspections that include direct measurement of perc levels are required for most New York cleaners. Independent inspectors certified by the state conduct the inspections, according to Nora Nealis, executive director of NCA.

The cost of the proposal is another point of contention. SCAQMD estimates it would cost cleaners up to $4.3 million a year over 15 years. If cleaners choose the most expensive technology. But wetcleaning machines cost less than perc machines, SCAQMD noted, although it acknowledged that alternative solvent machines tend to be more expensive. That’s one reason the district is offering up to $2 million to cleaners to help make the switch.

Industry groups have offered a counter proposal that would have all cleaners switch to at least fourth-generation equipment over five years. That would let cleaners stay within safe emission levels without needing to ban perc.

Up to two-thirds of the cleaners in the air district are believed to be operating second- and third-generation machines and would be faced with replacing that equipment in the near future. The cost may be too much for them, said Jackie Smith of Class Act Cleaners and the California Cleaners Association.

“Alternatives require higher capital costs, are more labor-intensive and may not clean as well as perc,” she said. “Our industry is made of minority small business owners and this proposal will drive many of our fellow cleaners out of business.”

In an article published in the Oct. 21 Los Angeles Times, Paul Choe of the Korean Drycleaners Association of Southern California called the South Coast initiative “a life threatening situation.”

“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 it this law passes, we’re going to have to spend a lot of money and some cleaners won’t have money to replace a machine. Some of them are going to go out of business,” he said.

The Times article was one of several that appeared in major newspapers in the past few weeks. The article led off by calling perc “the smelly solvent your clothes soak in when you take them to the drycleaner.”

But a drycleaning customer interviewed by the Times seemed to have doubts about the South Coast plan.

“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 Laura Boles, who was picking up an order of cleaning. “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.”

The Times presented a variety of viewpoints, both pro and con, on the issue, including a cleaner who switched from perc to wetcleaning and was glad to have done so. Moon K. Nah said he had grown weary of solvent fumes and regulations. Of his all-wetcleaning operation he said, “My customers enjoy it, I enjoy it and my employees enjoy it.”

The Times article was picked up the next day by The Washington Post. But The Wall Street Journal had both papers beat by three weeks, publishing an article on Oct. 1 that said Southern California’s “smog police” were preparing to ban perc.

The article was accompanied by a chart that shows drycleaning accounts for 25 percent of the perc used in the United States. Refrigerants claim half the usage; metal cleaning and degreasing, cleaning car brakes and assorted other uses make up the rest.

In response to the article, The Wall Street Journal published a letter to the editor from IFI’s Bill Fisher in which he noted “We have attempted, to no avail, to work out a reasonable compromise with SCAQMD to reduce perc emissions even further. It appears to us that California regulators intuitively decidedly that perc is ‘bad’ and have set about pulling together often faulty data in order to support their contention, all the while discounting the drycleaning industry’s record of safe and efficient perc use.”

Keeping the story alive, the Reuters news agency produced an article on the topic Oct. 22 that relied heavily on information from SCAQMD. Reuters also passed along comments from the Clean Air Coalition, which criticizes the South Coast proposal for not going far enough. The Coalition wants the phase-out period shortened to 10 years.

Actor Ed Begley Jr., a member of the Coalition’s board, was quoted saying “Perc is estimated to have contaminated one out of every ten public drinking water wells in California, costing the state $3 billion to clean up. Perc is dangerous to our health and our pockets. We must phase it out and turn to positive alternatives that do work.”