(July 31, 2006) — Many people don't realize that dry cleaning can be a messy business.

"People think you waft the clothes over a vat of something and they come out clean and on hangers and in plastic bags," said Judith Schreiber, a scientist who works for the New York Attorney General's Office.

It's not that simple.

Dry cleaners use more than 2 million gallons of chemical solvents every year to get the coffee splotches and sweat stains from our clothes.

For decades, the most common solvent, perchloroethylene, was believed to be harmless. Today, however, evidence is mounting that the chemical is carcinogenic and poses other health risks.

But as federal environmental officials implement new rules to control exposure to perchloroethylene, often called PERC, New York businesses are ahead of the curve, investing in new equipment and applauding the efforts of a state program that anticipated federal regulators by nearly a decade.

Neither the federal Environmental Protection Agency nor the state Department of Environmental Conservation has called for an outright ban on PERC, but local dry cleaners say they sense a change in the wind.

"I saw the direction that things were heading," said Neil Hellman, owner of 11 local Speedy's Cleaners locations and several other dry cleaning operations. Hellman doesn't believe that PERC poses a significant health risk, but like an increasing number of dry cleaners, he doesn't use the chemical in his operation.

"PERC is, in my opinion, the best dry cleaning solvent ..., the most effective solvent. But I will not buy another PERC machine," said Bob Joel, who owns the KEM Cleaners chain in Albany and serves as a local spokesman for the Northeast Fabricare Association.

Of about 32,000 dry cleaners in business nationwide today, 28,000 use PERC. And about 1,300 of those are believed to be in residential buildings, many of them in New York, according to the EPA. About 75,000 New Yorkers are believed to be exposed to PERC fumes in their apartments, according to state health and environmental officials.

The vast majority of the sites are in dense urban areas like New York City. In Rochester, most dry cleaning operations process their clothes in large central facilities far from residential neighborhoods. But that doesn't eliminate the risk, Schreiber said.

"Really, all of us are exposed to PERC in our daily lives, just by wearing dry-cleaned clothing," she said.

However, the EPA does not believe there is any elevated cancer risk from wearing dry-cleaned clothing.

The chemical, first created in a laboratory in 1821, is also known as tetrachloroethylene, and for the past 60 years it has been the standard for dry cleaning in America. PERC replaced the highly flammable chemicals used to clean clothes in the 1930s and '40s.

PERC is fat-soluble, which makes it very effective at removing oil and grease from fabrics. However, that also means it can be easily absorbed by human tissues and breast milk.

In addition, the chemical can contaminate soil and groundwater. In fact, dozens of sites where PERC was dumped behind cleaning operations or stored carelessly — including the former Dinaburg Distributing Inc. on South Clinton Avenue in Rochester — have been classified as contaminated brownfields or Superfund sites.

The chemical is also a volatile organic compound, or VOC — a category of chemicals that evaporates very easily. PERC is recognizable by its "sweet, chlorine-y smell," according to Schreiber.

Much of the recent concern about PERC began here in New York, when state health officials in Albany in the mid-1990s began investigating contamination in apartments that shared buildings with dry cleaners.

One such apartment, where a woman lived with her newborn, had staggeringly high levels, far exceeding federal standards for workers who come in contact with PERC.

"We practically fell off our chairs, the levels were so high," said Schreiber, who worked for the Health Department at the time.

As a result of the study and a follow-up project that investigated PERC levels at apartments throughout the Albany region, recent federal policy has focused on phasing out the use of PERC at dry cleaners in residential buildings by 2020.

The PERC problem is also an environmental justice issue, as minority families and those with lower incomes are far more likely to live in these contaminated apartments, according to state Health Department research.

And the people who live in apartments above dry cleaners aren't alone in their exposure risk, Schreiber said. Apartments, offices, day care centers and stores above or adjacent to dry cleaners have been found to have elevated levels of PERC in the air.

"The risks were exceptionally high," she said. "What gets there is sort of stuck there. These buildings don't have very good ventilation."

Some studies even indicate that PERC emanating from freshly cleaned clothing in a grocery-filled car is enough to contaminate food.

The state Attorney General's Office proposed that the EPA expand its rule to include these types of sites, and it continues to advocate for increased protection, Schreiber said.

Since the mid-1990s, state efforts to reduce the risk from PERC with annual inspections and a grant program to help small businesses modernize their equipment has made substantial progress, said John Julian, whose Julian Cleaners has six locations in the Rochester region but does all its cleaning in a central site on East Ridge Road.

"What it did is get rid of the people who were just sloppy. I think it's good for the business," he said.

Julian benefited from DEC grants to help small cleaners invest in new, cleaner equipment, and aims to stay "one step ahead of the law," he said.

But the grant program was limited, and Joel fears that "mom and pop" businesses, where proprietors tend to live above the cleaning operation, are struggling to comply with new requirements.

"There are people whose livelihood is being taken out from underneath them," Joel said. "There are some bad apples out there, and DEC needs to go after them and shut them down. But there's also a lot of guys like me who are spending a lot of money to do the right thing," he said.

Others say they have shifted from PERC to other solvents that are comparable in cost but pose fewer health and environmental risks.

At Speedy Cleaners, Hellman has replaced PERC with a petroleum hydrocarbon, which he says is cheaper but less powerful. Often his employees must do more spot-treating to get clothes clean. However, problems with beads or buttons, which PERC can melt, are now rare, he said.

And new ideas, which include ultrasonic cleaning, systems that rely on liquid carbon dioxide and even soap-and-water-based systems are emerging.

"Like everything else, (opposition to PERC) is driving new technologies," Hellman said.

MEDGECOM@DemocratandChronicle.com