Who Needs PCE?

Perchloroethylene (PCE) in dry cleaning is a poster child for the cause of finding alternatives to toxic chemicals in commerce, in today’s market-driven environment. As a society, if we can’t summon the collective will to solve the problem of implementing lower-risk fabric care products in place of PCE, we’re going to have real problems dealing with other widespread substances with health concerns, such as brominated fire retardants, phthalates or bisphenol-A.

Most stakeholders in the PCE “game” don’t really need it. People who use dry cleaning don’t “need” PCE; what they really need is convenient and affordable fabric care. Clothing manufacturers don’t “need” PCE, they need fabric care products that clean without damaging clothes. Dry cleaners “need” PCE, because many of them cannot afford the retrofits to use PCE alternatives and are afraid that customers, unwilling to risk their clothes on an “unproven” cleaning method, may start going to competitors.

Do chemical manufacturers “need” PCE? Available information suggests that current demand for PCE is around 300 million pounds per year, and is manufactured domestically in three facilities in the U.S. Government statistics report that approximately half of that used for dry cleaning, though a solvents industry statistic estimates that 12 percent is used for dry cleaning. A limited survey suggests that the cost for PCE is around one dollar per pound (or around ten dollars per gallon). Sources are here, here and here. The total annual value of PCE delivered to the dry cleaning industry (something less than $300 million?) would appear to be a small fraction of the total value of deliveries of all petrochemicals ($20.3 billion in 2002). This doesn’t include what users have to pay for emissions controls and waste management – but those aren’t things the chemical manufacturers have to worry about in determining the price for PCE. The point here is that chemical manufacturers might be able to manage without the PCE for dry cleaning market. The real challenges and costs are in helping dry cleaners convert from PCE.

This line of argument implies that I’ve already decided that the risks from PCE warrant finding substitutes, though not everyone would agree with me (see here and here). However, a fair-minded individual would entertain the possibility that having to do this much parsing of the uncertainty in health risks, for a setting involving widespread public and worker exposures, indicates that alternatives to PCE in dry cleaning should be given some consideration.

If we get to this point, the next step is to figure out, based on the risks from PCE exposure, what the alternatives should be. What kinds of risks need to be reduced, and how quickly should risk reduction occur? Can risks be reduced by the application of control technologies, or is substitution for fabric care chemicals needed? What are the relative costs of these various alternatives, and how permanent are they? Are there intermediate steps involved – should dry cleaners invest in PCE emissions controls now and purchase non-PCE-using wet-cleaning machines later, or is the appropriate wet-cleaning technology available now? What encouragement needs to be applied to the garment manufacturers to modify their “dry-cleaning only” labels, so that non-PCE alternatives can be used on clothes? What are the economic impacts of the additional risk reductions? How are these impacts offset for those firms hit the hardest by them?

For some, this sounds too much like risk and cost-benefit analysis, something which in theory is a useful tool for helping make complex decisions affecting different stakeholder groups. However, it’s flawed if not used in a democratic fashion (a discussion on making these kinds of analyses more democratic is here). Cost-benefit analysis enjoyed some brief popularity in the mid-1990s, but rapidly lost favor thanks to the Republicans in Congress, who brought it into disrepute by molding it into a tool for slowing the pace of environmental regulation and reducing regulatory impact to industries.

About the same time, there was active research into alternatives to PCE in dry cleaning – which seem to have tapered off. The work is still on the shelf though, waiting for us to summon the political will to get the process started. By itself, PCE is not the largest chemical or environmental health problem we face. But it could become the template for how we start developing alternatives for higher-hazard chemicals in general, if that’s what we want to do.