Personal Injury Law

Iowa Workers' Compensation - PERC - Part XIII - A look at drycleaning equipment.

By Steve Lombardi

Machine Design and Number of Machines -- Evaluation of operator exposures indicated that the most important factor affecting PERC exposure was the drycleaning machine design. Research results showed that worker exposure occurred from three primary drycleaning machine sources: residual solvent expelled from the machine cylinder during loading/unloading, residual solvent off-gassing from garments, and solvent expelled by some machine vents during the deodorizing step.

Related to machine design is the machine capacity. Machine's having a larger capacity can clean more garments in fewer cycles than machine's having smaller capacities, thus reducing the number of times the machine must be loaded and unloaded and thereby reducing exposure. Another relevant factor is the number of drycleaning machines at each shop. Each machine can be thought of as a generation source. The number of drycleaning machines in a shop is an indicator of the quantity of garments being processed. The number of machines and quantity of garments processed will determine the number of times the machines must be loaded and unloaded and therefore will impact exposure.

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on February 14, 2008 (boomark / email).