NATURAL PERSPECTIVES
On Nov. 1, the South Coast Air Quality Management District will
consider a ban on a widely used dry cleaning fluid called Perc. If
the ban passes, our area will be the first in the nation to prohibit
use of this toxic chemical for dry cleaning.
Perc is the cute, harmless-sounding nickname for
perchloroethylene, a highly volatile organic solvent. How could the
nasty old air quality district want to ban such a cute-sounding
chemical? Sure, the air stinks inside dry cleaning establishments,
and workers in the industry get headaches, dizziness, sore throats
and coughs, but is that reason enough to ban use of Perc?
No, the reason is that dry cleaning workers also have higher rates
than the general public of cancers of the lung, cervix, esophagus,
intestine, pancreas and bladder. Perc has also been blamed for liver
and kidney toxicity. Officials from the air quality district say that
dry cleaning establishments pose a greater risk of cancer to workers
and nearby residents than oil refineries and power plants. In fact,
the risk of cancer is two to 14 times higher in people living near
dry cleaning businesses than in people who live near an oil refinery
or power plant.
In 2000, the Air Quality Management District identified Perc as
one of six key toxic air contaminants. But the California Cleaners
Assn., an organization of cleaning establishment owners, says that
Perc isn't that bad. The association claims that the health risk
studies are flawed.
We wanted to sift through the hype and fear-mongering from one
side and the self-interested denial from the other side. We wanted
the truth. It wasn't easy to find.
The Environmental Protection Agency Web site, one of our
first-line sources of environmental information, was filled with
arcane facts and hard-to-understand tables. We quickly gave up on
that. We resorted to searching the National Library of Medicine
online to read the original medical studies for ourselves. This is
what we learned:
It is clear that Perc causes cancer in animals. But of course,
researchers can't test chemicals on humans. They have to look at
people who are exposed during the course of work and see what happens
after years of exposure.
What epidemiologists found is that dry cleaning workers have much
higher rates of cancer of the esophagus and bladder than other
people. Exposed workers also have an elevated risk for cancer of the
tongue, intestine and lung, as well as for pneumonia and diseases of
