Page "Dry cleaning" Paragraph 5

By the mid-1930s, the dry cleaning industry had adopted tetrachloroethylene ( perchloroethylene ), or " perc " for short, as the ideal solvent.

It has excellent cleaning power and is stable, nonflammable, and gentle to most garments.

Perc, however, was incidentally the first chemical to be classified as a carcinogen by the Consumer Product Safety Commission ( a classification later withdrawn ).

In 1993, the California Air Resources Board adopted regulations to reduce perc emissions from dry cleaning operations ; the same year, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) followed suit.

The EPA updated its regulation in 2006 to reflect the availability of improved emission controls.