Two dangerous chemicals commonly used in dry cleaning have been banned by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The colorless solvents, known as Perc or PCE and TCE, can cause kidney cancer and other serious health issues.
“It’s simply unacceptable to continue to allow cancer-causing chemicals to be used for things like glue, dry cleaning or stain removers when safer alternatives exist,” Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a Monday statement. “These rules are grounded in the best-available science that demonstrates the harmful impacts of PCE and TCE.”
Safer alternatives to PCE and TCE are becoming widely available, Freedhoff also told The New York Times.
“There’s simply no reason to continue to use this stuff to make glue, or as a dry cleaning aid, or to clean up grease,” she said. “The risk is just too great.”
In comments submitted to the agency, the Dry Cleaning and Laundry Institute and the National Cleaners Association said that “any future decision to reduce or phase out the use of PCE in dry-cleaning will put an oppressive burden on thousands of cleaners.”
Last year, the agency had proposed to ban most uses of PCE and to establish a program to manage uses that aren’t prohibited. A few months later, it also proposed to ban the manufacture, import, processing, and distribution of TCE for all uses.
Once used as an anesthetic for surgery, most uses of TCE will be prohibited within one year, and many TCE uses that are continuing for longer than a year occur in industrial settings that can adopt its new worker protections. The agency said it would allow lab use and proper disposal of TCE wastewater to continue for 50 years, assuming those protections are in place including a new inhalation exposure limit that is estimated to reduce long-term workplace exposure by 97 percent.
PCE, which has been commonly used in brake cleaners and adhesives, will be phased out over the course of a decade in dry cleaning, to eliminate the risk to people who work or spend considerable time at those businesses. However, the use of PCE in newly acquired dry-cleaning machines will be prohibited after a period of six months. Manufacturing, processing, and distribution will largely be fully phased out in less than three years.
PCE can still be used industrially in aviation and defense, with regulations in place to protect workers.
Minnesota was the first US state to ban both chemicals.
“As is often the case, you don’t really learn about a chemical until it’s in the news, then you do your research and you wonder, ‘Wow, why are they even using this?’” former Minnesota state representative Ami Wazlawik said of TCE, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Deaths have been linked to both chemicals, with one 45-year-old woman poisoned by both. She was discovered “unconscious and in cardiac arrest in a laundry area,” according to the World Health Organization’s Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality: Selected Pollutants.
Both chemicals are known to cause liver and kidney cancer. TCE can also damage the central nervous system, immune system, reproductive organs, and cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma: a blood cancer that starts in the lymphatic system. PCE can also cause brain and testicular cancer, as well as damage the immune system and cause neurotoxicity, and reproductive toxicity.
PCE can enter the body through contact with the skin or in the air, and TCE’s main route of exposure is also inhalation.
Notably, even tiny PCE spills can be hazardous to the environment, since the chemical can travel through concrete, Katie Fellows, an environmental scientist at the Hazardous Waste Management Program in Washington state, told The Washington Post.
Officials reacting to the news said the bans would save lives going forward.
“Despite their dangers, these chemicals could still be found in industries like dry cleaning, automotive repair and manufacturing,” Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey said in a statement. “With no doubt that these chemicals are deadly, there is no doubt that this final rule will save lives — especially our children’s lives — around the country.”
“Having separate laws and agencies to protect work (OSHA) and non-work (EPA) environments under-protects workers. The Toxic Substances Control Act finally changed that,” David Michaels, former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, wrote on social media. “EPA’s banning TCE and PCE overcomes a weakness of OSHA and will save many workers’ lives.”