WP: Some Dry Cleaners Told to Phase Out Toxic Solvent

[DeepModem Mom]

Some Dry Cleaners Told to Phase Out Toxic Solvent
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 15, 2006; Page A02

The Environmental Protection Agency tightened public health standards for dry cleaners yesterday, saying that cleaning shops in residential buildings must stop using a toxic solvent in their machines by 2020.

Administration officials said the new restrictions on perchloroethylene, or perc, a hazardous air pollutant, would reduce Americans' exposure to a chemical linked to cancer and neurological damage. But environmentalists said the rule did not go far enough, since it will take years to phase out machines using the harmful solvent....

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Several scientific studies have found a connection between dry cleaning employees' exposure to perc and impaired neurological function, along with a higher cancer risk. One study of two New York couples living above a dry cleaner on the Upper West Side found elevated levels of the chemical in their blood, urine and breast milk, as well as vision impairment linked to exposure....

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Judith Schreiber, chief scientist for the New York attorney general's Environmental Protection Bureau, said "there's good news and there's bad news" in the EPA's decision. She welcomed the ban on any new perc operations in residential buildings, but she questioned why the agency was allowing cleaners 14 years to get rid of their old machines and why they were allowing dry cleaners in buildings housing offices and day-care centers to meet a less stringent standard....

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Agency officials wrote that the phaseout allows the government to protect the public health "without causing unacceptable adverse economic impact" on the industry....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401366.html

[pitohui]

1. FINALLY!

durn it has taken forever to get some movement on this one

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. Perchloroethylene is very bad stuff

People should think twice before sending stuff to the dry cleaners. So what if your shirts come out a little wrinkled, at least you didn't have to destroy someone else's health in the process.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. We had a little bout...

With Perc out there in Warren County NJ. There was a company out here that made circuit boards, called Area Lighting Research. It was run by one Daniel DiCarlo, who also just happened to be the county repuke chairman, joined at the hip with the Assembly Speaker, Chuck Haytaian, a most powerful sumbitch.

ALR used perc to clean its circuit boards. They would take the top off a 55 gallon kit of the crap and just dunk the boards into it, to clean off the left-over flux and other detritus hang them on racks and let them dry. The perc would drip off and run down a french drain that was connected to a pipe that just ended somewhere in a drainage field. When the perc became saturated with the crap, they would take the drum out back into the field and dump it on the ground.

Well, perc is a great solvent which means that it went through the ground like shit through a goose. Eventually, it made it's way to a huge area-supplying aquifer and polluted it. This aquifer supplied the wells for, very conservatively, 20,000 homes. Likely a lot more. There was no real way to do reclamation.

Because of his political connections, Mr. DiCarlo got slapped with a fine he was easily able to pay, no jail time, and now lives in Florida. Of course, he was told that he had used up his political Monopoly money, so seeya.

Haytaian went on to other scandals and now works as a customer service person in a local Sears.

A lot of people no longer have wells.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Thanks for posting this story, TS. nt

[PSPS]

5. Yeah, right. 2020. Fourteen years away.

Plenty of time to "forget" the regulation, bury its rescission in the federal register or an unrelated piece of legislation, shake down the industry for a "campaign contribution" or, most likely, give halliburton or a company owned by a bush crony time to corner the market on a substitute.

One thing we can be sure of: this isn't being driven by any desire to "protect the public health."