LAUREL, Md. — The regulatory challenge getting the most attention in the drycleaning industry right now isn’t perchloroethylene (perc). It’s a family of chemicals most dry cleaners have never intentionally used.

PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are a group of roughly 15,000 synthetic chemicals used in nonstick cookware, food packaging, waterproofing treatments and fire-suppression foam, among other things. They don’t break down. They accumulate in the body. 

And, according to Jon Meijer, director of membership for the Drycleaning & Laundry Institute (DLI), they’re landing on dry cleaners’ radar through a source the industry has little control over: the clothes coming through the door.

Meijer laid out the current legislative picture during a recent DLI webinar, “Regulatory Update for Garment Care Professionals.” In Part 1, we explored the coming perc ban and what it means to dry cleaners. Today, we’ll continue by examining the PFAS puzzle for dry cleaners and the state of alternative solvents.

“(PFAS) is in the drinking water and it’s affecting everybody,” Meijer says. “It’s really a product that’s everywhere.”

Clothing treated for water resistance is one of the primary carriers. Rain jackets, leggings, outdoor gear — anything designed to repel moisture — may contain PFAS. U.S. clothing manufacturers are prohibited from using the chemicals, but imported fast fashion, particularly from China and India, may still contain them in dyes and fabric treatments.

One area where dry cleaners may have some direct exposure: older waterproofing products. If a shop is still offering waterproofing services using older formulations, Meijer recommends checking what’s in them.

“I would probably take it down,” he says of older waterproofing products listed on a business website. “That’s probably not a good thing.”

The industry’s connection to PFAS is largely passive, Meijer says. Garments come in, dry cleaners clean them, and the PFAS-laced water goes into the sewer, where municipal treatment facilities — not equipped to remove the chemicals — pass them through into the water supply.

Meijer is direct about where the blame sits: “By and large, we didn’t do a damn thing to create this problem. It comes in through the clothing. We’re just cleaning clothes. That’s it.”

A few plants — including a large cleaner in Wisconsin — have faced regulatory pressure over PFAS levels in their wastewater. Carbon filtration can capture the chemicals, Meijer says, but the systems run $50,000 to $75,000, require ongoing maintenance and replacement as the carbon saturates, and are beyond the reach of most small operations.

Meijer’s read on the long-term regulatory picture is that the problem is too widespread for the government to address at the plant level. At some point, the pressure will shift upstream.

“My gut feeling is that the federal government at some point will have to regulate the treatment facilities,” he says. “That’s the only way you can do it. Otherwise, it’s just everywhere. And the only thing our industry is doing is cleaning clothes. We’re not really responsible for the PFAS that comes off the clothes.”

For now, the broader regulatory slowdown has taken some of the immediate pressure off. Activity on PFAS from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has quieted in the past year, along with most other agency rule-making.

While PFAS concerns have grown, the alternative solvents the industry has been moving toward in the past two decades are in solid regulatory standing, Meijer says. Hydrocarbon has been in commercial use the longest, and over his 40 years in the industry, Meijer says he can count meaningful regulatory incidents on one hand.

“As far as we know, all the other substances that are out there, on the environmental side, have been fine and not under any regulatory scrutiny whatsoever,” he says.

One concept worth understanding, Meijer says, is what the EPA calls “regrettable substitution” — when an industry switches from a banned chemical to an approved alternative, only to have regulators come back for the new one.

“They take an industry and say, ‘You can’t use this chemical, so you use something else that’s allowed,’ and then they come back five minutes later and say, ‘You can’t use that chemical as well,’” Meijer says. “We’ve been, by and large, fortunate.”

The current generation of multipurpose machines, capable of running most common solvents with minor modifications, gives operators flexibility that didn’t exist a generation ago.

Come back Thursday for our conclusion, where we’ll explore OSHA compliance, including the three requirements inspectors will look for and how to handle them when they show up. For Part 1 of this series, click HERE.