THAT fresh, squeaky clean odour from your neighbourhood dry-cleaning shop might be warning you of the presence of a dangerous toxin.
Chances are the odour is caused by perchloroethylene or PCE, a dry-cleaning solvent linked to neurological, kidney and liver damage in laboratory animals and suspected of causing cancer in humans.
If PCE is exposed to air during the dry-cleaning process, some of the liquid evaporates into the air.
People can breathe it in or ingest it through fatty foods such as milk, butter and margarine, as well as the breast milk of nursing mothers, which can become contaminated with PCE.
Dry-cleaning workers and people living above dry cleaning shops are both at risk, scientists have learned. Surveys in New York found flats as far as 12 floors away from the source were contaminated with PCE. The PCE can travel through air shafts, pipes and stairwells.
In one flat in the US, PCE concentrations reached 197,000 micrograms per cubic metre, which was far greater than the safety standard for residential exposure of 100 micrograms per cubic metre.
Studies have shown that animals showed liver damage of PCE concentrations of only 70,000 micrograms per cubic metre.
