Editorial Comment

Petroleum products going "natural"; dry cleaning and male births

July 1998 Vol. 219 No. 7
Editorial

Thomas R. Wright, Jr.,
Editorial Director

Appearance is everything

There have been a couple of items in the news recently that seem to go against the conventional environmental thinking. One that surprised us most was a Wall Street Journal article about a service that uses a petroleum-based product, but now is suddenly considered "green." While we welcome the realization that everything petroleum-related is not poisonous, carcinogenic or otherwise hazardous, we suspect the promoters of this new green service are taking advantage of the environmental trend, and would rather we didn’t spotlight its use of a derivative of dirty old oil.

The service in question is dry cleaning, and one of its promoters is Cleaner by Nature, a new cleaning store smack in the middle of Denver, which probably is second only to the Left Coast when it comes to the environmentally enlightened. Like numerous other industries, dry cleaning is trying to put a back-to-nature spin on its operations and is hyping the new technique (actually it’s 50 years old) which does away with perchloroethylene as the cleaning fluid. "Perc," which replaced petroleum solvents for dry cleaning in the late 1930s, has been labeled toxic and is subject to strict governmental controls. Now, petroleum solvents, which used to allow clothes cleaned in them to catch fire easily, can be treated to raise the ignition temperature. This, coupled with the fact that clothes cleaned in petroleum solvent don’t smell, is helping to bring the cleaning industry full circle.

This about-face and the proactive environmental marketing that results from simply adding "by Nature" to a company name gives us pause to wonder if other petroleum products couldn’t benefit from similar strategies. Perhaps we’ll soon see Exxon and its tiger (gasp, a predator) replaced by new gasoline station brand called Fueled by Nature and represented by the innocuous koala bear.

Perc is also coming under attack by some other so-called green alternatives, but it’s doubtful they will pass the ecological test. One is soap and water, which has long been maligned because of the phosphates in the soap and the need to produce and then treat the water. The other uses liquid carbon dioxide, and everybody knows that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, which will cause the end of the world as we know it.

A second news item piqued our curiosity since it’s conceivable that it is related to the above. It seems that the male birth rate in the U.S. and Canada is declining, and — you guessed it — it’s being blamed on environmental factors such as pesticides and industrial chemicals.

One Devra Lee Davis, and environmental epidemiologist at the World Resources Institute, says that the number of male births in the U.S. has plummeted from about 51.34% of the total in 1970 to 51.21% in 1990. That’s a decrease of one male birth per 1,000 live births. In Canada, the decrease was even more, declining by 2.2 male births per 1,000 live births by 1990. On the other hand, the worldwide average birthrate was 51.5% male.

At first glance, one might think that these declines are statistically insignificant. After all, a 0.13% drop in anything over 20 years is hardly noticeable. However, when one looks at the time interval involved, the case could be made that the decline in male birth rate was due to the increased use of perchloroethylene for dry cleaning.

For example, let’s assume a base year of 1970, since that’s when the researchers began their comparison. Assume too that the average age of expectant parents during that year was 25 – 30 years. That means that the parents were born between 1940 and 1945, which coincidentally is about the time that perc was replacing petroleum based cleaning solvents. As usage of perc became more widespread and man-made fabrics displaced cotton (which was conventionally washable), the exposure increased substantially. Then came the 1980s and the emergence of the Yuppies, who probably wouldn’t even wash their own drawers, meaning they had to be cleaned, leading to even higher (and more direct) exposure to perc and even lower male birth rates.

The good news is that all of this will be reversed as petroleum solvents replace perc for dry cleaning. And during the next thirty years, you can rest assured that the male birth rate will be back to "normal."

Finally, we weren’t especially surprised by the type of culprit that recently admitted to discharging bilge oil offshore. The Royal Caribbean Cruise line acknowledged that it had dumped oil off the Florida and Puerto Rican coasts and would pay a $9 million fine.

The above revelation is totally opposite of the image one usually has of this entertainment industry — crystal blue skies, shimmering emerald green waters, etc. — as depicted in its advertising. But it seems that this classic case of "messing in one’s own nest" has been rampant for some time. Only now, the U.S. Coast Guard is utilizing technology and regulatory authority developed in response to the Exxon Valdez accident to go after the cruise lines.

Royal Caribbean certainly isn’t the only line under the gun — several others have either paid fines or are being watched. However, prior to the record fine, we have to wonder whether the cruise lines were setting themselves up for disaster. Imagine the revulsion potential customers would have had to the sight of a pristine beach covered with bilge oil, possibly accompanied by some champagne bottles and, say, a menu from the Princess Polluter.