For That Just-Pressed Look, Another Price to Pay

Tens of thousands of New Yorkers, nearly 88,000 in Manhattan alone, live close to a dry cleaner. (By Judith S. Schreiber -- New York Office Of The Attorney General)

NEW YORK -- Judith Schreiber, the chief scientist for the New York attorney general's Environmental Protection Bureau, is not a professional tour guide. But she's become expert in giving what she calls "the Broadway Tour of Dry Cleaners," a walk along the Upper West Side in which she points out the environmental hazards that lurk within hundreds of cleaning establishments.

With its 912 dry cleaners in five boroughs, New York City is the nation's epicenter of dry cleaning. Who knows why New Yorkers have more dry cleaners than any other city in the United States? New York is a large city, to be sure, but it is also a place where a half-dozen shops cater to an haute couture clientele who willingly pay $150 an item. Perhaps it's because they dress better than other Americans, or they're more fastidious. Maybe they recoil at wrinkles or simply run out of hangers on occasion.

This devotion to cleanliness, however, has a downside. Its name is perchloroethylene, or perc, and it's the solvent that more than 28,000 dry cleaners nationwide use to make sure clothes are just so when they are returned to customers. The chemical is a hazardous air pollutant linked to cancer and neurological damage, and the federal government is on the verge of imposing new national standards to limit perc's reach.

While dry-cleaning workers are most at risk -- according to scientific studies, they have a higher chance of getting cancer than the average American -- residents living near a dry-cleaning establishment are also in danger, Schreiber said. In Manhattan, examples of this sort of close quarters abound, with nearly 88,000 New Yorkers living within 65 feet of a dry cleaner.

"The people in those buildings have no idea they're being exposed to perc," Schreiber said as she strolled up Broadway. "We have a public health threat here, and we have to protect people."

Schreiber once took a casual survey along with an Environmental Protection Agency official to see which kind of establishment dominated the streets of the Upper West Side: dry cleaners, nail salons or Starbucks stores. Dry cleaners won, with Starbucks coming in second.

Those kinds of statistics worry public health advocates such as William Becker, who lobbies for state and local air pollution officials in Washington. "The public health risks from dry cleaners that share a building with residences or other businesses are alarming. If these were Superfund sites, they would have been shut down long ago. If these were drinking water supplies, the spigots would have been turned off immediately."

EPA officials have issued a three-tiered proposal aimed at controlling perc and its vapors. About 15 major dry cleaners would have to install machines to recapture emissions, while nearly 27,000 smaller facilities -- many in buildings that also house offices and day-care centers -- would have to detect leaks and cut emissions by conducting the wash cycle and the dry cycle in one machine. About 1,300 dry cleaners located in residential buildings would either enclose their machines or do the wash cycle and the dry cycle together. Any new residential dry cleaner could no longer use perc.

"Risks from most dry cleaners across the country generally are low, and our proposed requirements would make them even lower," said William Wehrum, acting assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, when he issued the proposal in December.

Schreiber is not impressed. The new federal rules are modeled on the standards New York state adopted in 1997, which she and others think are not stringent enough. The Bush administration is taking public comments on the issue until Thursday and plans to finalize the rule by July 13.

Two couples who lived for years above a dry cleaner at 104th Street and Amsterdam Avenue think the government should keep cleaners out of residential buildings altogether. The four of them: Danny O'Brien and Mori Mickelson, who still live in the building, and Cathy Sears and Daniel Robbins, who moved out, all started experiencing health problems in the mid-1990s that they later linked to perc from the cleaners below.

They all had elevated perc levels in their blood, urine and even breast milk; when Schreiber tested them, she found they had the same kind of neurological function problems that dry cleaning workers experience, including vision impairment. The four withheld rent from their landlord and eventually won most of that rent in court. New York City's Health Department, under pressure from then-New York public advocate Mark Green, forced the dry cleaner to stop using perc in 1996.

Mickelson, who passed out one day in August 1997 while nursing her baby boy Levi, said she still fears her family's health could be affected by exposure to some remaining perc. "I hope we all end up healthy, but it's too soon to tell, isn't it?" she asked, as 9-year-old Levi played with Sears and Robbins's 10-year-old daughter Molly.

Meanwhile, 20 blocks away, Landmark Cleaners owner Paul Breitstein is waiting to hear if federal authorities will make him install more expensive equipment to contain the exhaust from his shop.

"When it comes to the government, they pretty much do what they want," Breitstein said. "I just abide by what they set so I can continue to do business."