Is dry cleaning all wet?

• Author: Ryan, Megan
• Position: Environmentally safe methods of dry cleaning

Half a century ago, the London if dry cleaning industry ganged up on a German immigrant operating a small cleaning service, threatening to sue him for his seemingly outrageous claim that dry cleaning with chemical solvents damaged clothing by removing its natural oils. Fortunately for modern-day consumers, Edward Friedburg fought off their legal threats and continued to operate his cleaning service, relying on gentle detergents and steam in the place of chemicals.

As it turns out, Friedburg's competition need not have worried. Cleaning with chemical solvents continued to flourish while Friedburg's toxic-free method headed for obscurity. Until recently, that is. A range of hazards that Friedburg could not have anticipated, including groundwater contamination, air pollution in and around cleaners, and chemical accumulation in food have led environmentalists and governments alike to question the process of cleaning clothes with chemicals.

What's all the fuss? To understand, it is helpful to know how dry cleaning works. When you take a suit in to be dry cleaned, it is drenched in a chemical solvent. (Imagining your best suit in a chemical bath might be alarming, but the solvent has the advantage of not expanding the fabric's fibers as much as water would, so the garment still fits when it dries and the colors don't run.) After the chemical-soaked garment is tossed through a modified washing machine, the highly volatile solvent evaporates in a dryer. Then the suit is pressed, hung, and returned to you, bagged in plastic with a vague chemical smell that means some of the solvent is still evaporating.

Compared to paint factories and chemical plants, dry cleaners don't stand out in the lineup of potentially dangerous toxic industries. However, they are illustrative of an important problem facing government environmental agencies: how to enforce hazardous waste regulations in hundreds of thousands of tiny, but nevertheless toxic, businesses.

Unfortunately, small-time waste producers generally are not subject to the same stringent licensing requirements that govern the transferral and disposal of big companies' toxic waste. Inspections are rare because state and local governments typically don't have enough money to focus on the little guys. New York City, for example, has a staff of four inspectors to handle more than 1,700 dry cleaners and other types of businesses, says Judith Schreiber, senior research scientist for the New York State Department...