National Clothesline

The Environmental Protection Agency will have to defend its new clean-air rules for drycleaners in court now that legal challenges have been launched both by industry and environmental groups.

The rules adopted by EPA in July would require all drycleaners who use perc to start an enhanced leak detection and repair program. All new drycleaning machines would have to be at least fourth-generation and cleaners who are still using transfer machines would have to replace them with new equipment.

But the most contentious part of the new rules calls for phasing out the use of perc in drycleaning plants located in residential buildings by 2020. No new perc machines of any type would be allowed in these locations, according to EPA.

Four industry groups — the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, the International Fabricare institute, the National Cleaners Association and the Textile Care Allied Trades Association — joined in filing a petition for review of the EPA rules in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The industry trade association’s primary challenge is to EPA’s decision to phase out perc in co-residential locations. EPA estimates that there are about 1,300 such locations.

“EPA has disregarded industry’s legitimate concerns and Congress’s clear intent with regard to these 1,300 mom-and-pop businesses,” said IFI CEO Bill Fisher.

More than the fate of those 1,300 cleaners could be at stake, however. “While this lawsuit focuses on co-residential cleaners and their use of perc,” said Nora Nealis, executive director of the NCA, “it is part of a larger issue of defending cleaners’ ability to choose the solvent or process that works best for them while emphasizing the industry’s commitment to protecting the health and safety of our families, employees and neighbors.”

While the industry groups believe EPA went too far in further regulating perc, the Sierra Club said EPA did not go far enough when it, too, filed suit over the regulations. Represented by Earthjustice, the Sierra Club’s lawsuit challenges the EPA’s refusal to phase out the use of perchloroethylene, which it called “a highly toxic chemical.”

“EPA’s refusal to get perc out of our communities is the latest letdown from an agency that consistently fails to do what Congress plainly intended: protect the public from toxic pollution,” said Earthjustice attorney James Pew. “Drycleaning machines that spew toxic pollution can and should be replaced. Perhaps the same could be said of the leadership at EPA.”

It’s the industry’s contention, however, that Congress did not intend for EPA to impose the kind of regulations it did on drycleaners this past summer.

“During their work on the 1991 Amendments, Congress spent significant time looking at emissions from small businesses,” said Fisher.

“Drycleaning was used as a specific example of their intent with requirements for small area sources. And Congress made it absolutely clear that their intent was that if EPA imposed a certain type of emission standards for small area sources, they were then prohibited from coming back and piling on further onerous standards in the future.”

“Now, the industry wants EPA to do exactly what it was told to do by Congress. The Sierra Club and others, with their sensationalistic but inaccurate claims, are trying to pressure EPA into doing what Congress told them clearly they were not to do.”

HSIA noted that since the implementation of EPA’s original 1993 standards, drycleaners have reduced perc emission by more than 70 percent through replacement of older drycleaning machines and improved work practices.

Further study of the health effects of perc seems to weaken the connection between cancer and exposure to the solvent, HSIA added. A study of Nordic drycleaning workers, sponsored by HSIA and the Danish medical Research Council, was published earlier this year showing that the incidences of several important cancer types among drycleaning workers in Nordic countries do not appear to be related to perc.

In part because this study was not considered by EPA in its evaluation of perc, the industry is also challenging EPA’s dependence on a limited amount of data in revamping tis rules for perc. EPA will be incorporating the results of the Nordic study in its reassessment of perc, which is currently underway.