Dry cleaners see few perks in using perc

Laundries start to adopt alternatives to chemical irritant

By Eric Gold

Pamplin Media Group, Jan 8, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

Mickie McClure of Tip Top Cleaners spins a clothing rack to reach a customer’s order. The family-run business is among Oregon dry cleaners that have stopped using the solvent perchloroethylene in favor of greener practices.

L.E. BASKOW / PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP

ADVERTISEMENTS

Mickie McClure of Tip Top Cleaners on East Burnside Street remembers her aunt showing her, 30 years ago, how to hand-dry a garment that had been cleaned with the solvent perchloroethylene.

The perc, as it is known, would evaporate into the air in the family shop.

“We didn’t know any better,” McClure says, “but I would never go back to perc.”

That’s because perc now is known to cause dizziness, headaches and nausea, as well as skin, lung and eye irritation. It was classified in 2005 as “reasonably anticipated” to be a human carcinogen by the federal government’s National Toxicology Program – “reasonably anticipated,” in this context, meaning that the evidence is limited but not negligible.

States work to get rid of perc

Dick Dezeeuw, of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, says that once perc has been released into the environment, it is very difficult to find and clean up, because it is heavier than water and seeps into the ground.

There are alternatives to perc.

McClure and several other cleaners in Portland use a silicon-based solvent, known as D5, that is licensed for use in dry cleaning by GreenEarth Cleaning, based in Kansas City, Mo.

Another option, professional wet cleaning, uses computer-controlled machines that allow “dry clean only” fabrics to be cleaned with water. There also are petroleum-based solvents, such as ExxonMobil’s DF-2000, and liquid carbon dioxide, though no cleaners in Oregon currently are using the latter.

Perc still is used by as many as 90 percent of the dry cleaners in Oregon, according to the Oregon Dry Cleaners Association.

Meanwhile, California has mandated a phaseout of the chemical by 2023, and New Jersey is working on a similar ban. If perc is toxic, and alternatives exist, why is it still widely used?

“It costs a hunk of dough to convert,” says Earl Eckstrom of Oregon chain the Cleanery, who says he was the first in Oregon to switch away from perc. New equipment can cost as much as $60,000, a prohibitive amount for many small businesses.

Nearing 80 and semiretired, Eckstrom uses DF-2000.

“I felt that perc was destined to be regulated out of the dry-cleaning industry,” he says, “so I might as well get ahead of it.”