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chemical industry
The US Has Taken Too Long to ‘Slam the Door’ on Asbestos
The protracted journey to any kind of asbestos ban is a sobering reminder of how long the United States takes to regulate chemicals on any shelf.
Apr 07, 2024
Like almost all things chemical in the United States, the recent announcement by the Biden administration that it is banning a major form of asbestos is both a triumph and a disgrace.
The triumph is that after decades of Sisyphean advocacy by public health groups and scientists, chrysotile asbestos, a known carcinogen, is finally facing an assorted set of deadlines for import and use in this nation. In a bit of rhetorical ecstasy, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan proclaimed that the federal government “is finally slamming the door on a chemical so dangerous that it has been banned in over 50 countries.”
Even with this move, the United States remains many steps behind other developed nations when it comes to asbestos and chemical safety across the board—thanks to decades of industrial and political suppression of science, the enduring might of industrial lobbyists, and our ever-divided government.
While this administration does deserve credit for acting on asbestos after years of neglect, it is more accurate to describe the White House as politely showing the door to companies who use what is nicknamed “white asbestos.” Two years ago, when the EPA first started proposing rules to get the last uses of asbestos out of current applications, the agency floated a two-year deadline. After heavy lobbying by the chemical industry, which still uses asbestos diaphragms to produce a third of the nation’s chlorine, it now may be up to 12 years before the last chlorine company converts to non-asbestos technology.
The Biden administration is also generally giving a two to five-year phaseout period to companies that use asbestos sheet gaskets to seal pipes. The quickest prohibition is six months against asbestos in automotive brakes and linings, other vehicle friction parts, and oilfield gear. Brenda Mallory, the White House’s chair of its Council on Environmental Quality said, “This action marks a major step to improve chemical safety.”
It should be clear that it is only a step, and therein lies the disgrace. Even with this move, the United States remains many steps behind other developed nations when it comes to asbestos and chemical safety across the board—thanks to decades of industrial and political suppression of science, the enduring might of industrial lobbyists, and our ever-divided government.
Deny, Delay, Disinform
Asbestos makers have known since the 1930s that their products were dangerous and yet they purposely buried that knowledge for decades. They banked on being able to avoid consequences for cancers that took decades to develop in workers who inhaled asbestos fibers. Johns-Manville, the 20th century’s largest asbestos manufacturer, was infamous for a longstanding policy of not telling employees whether asbestosis showed up in their physical examinations.
The entire industry and insurers led by Metropolitan Life copied the same playbook. According to a paper in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, the final draft of a 1957 industry study deleted the internal finding that asbestos miners with asbestosis were more likely to develop lung cancer than a person without asbestosis. That, in turn successfully, dampened the concern of the American Medical Association.
The leading AMA industrial health editor wrote the authors of the industrial study to say he was “particularly pleased” at the findings of no association of lung cancer to asbestosis. The association’s top consultant for occupational disease went so far as to claim in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association that there was “no epidemiological evidence” of increased lung cancer among workers exposed to asbestos.
Even today, asbestos exposure is still tied to 40,000 deaths a year in the United States and 255,000 worldwide.
The legacy of death and disease from disinformation and “disappeared” information haunts us to this day. By the beginning of 2001, according to a 2004 report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 600,000 people had filed lawsuits over asbestos-related illnesses that had already cost companies $54 billion in legal costs, with an eventual projected total cost of between $200 billion and $265 billion. The NBER said asbestos cases “involve more plaintiffs, more defendants, and higher costs than any other type of personal injury litigation in U.S. history.”
Just two years ago, a Montana jury awarded $36.5 million to a man who worked in the late 1960s at a vermiculite mine and mill in the town of Libby where the mineral was contaminated with asbestos. The operations were owned by W.R. Grace, but the villain, according to the verdict, was the mill’s workers compensation insurer, Maryland Casualty.
The doctors for the insurer did not tell workers that their annual X-rays showed scarring of the lungs. A New York Timesfeature quoted a 1967 memo from a lawyer of the insurer who feared “the extent and severity of the problem.” The mine was closed in 1990, but its asbestos dust has so far been tied to 400 deaths and 2,400 cases of disease. In 2009, for the first time ever, the EPA declared a public health emergency, calling the asbestos contamination in Libby “the worst case of industrial poisoning of a whole community in American history.”
Still a Modern Killer
Even today, asbestos exposure is still tied to 40,000 deaths a year in the United States and 255,000 worldwide. It was not until the 1970s that the United States began banning the crumbly forms of asbestos insulation on boilers and hot water tanks, fireproofing sprays, and wall patching. By then, no one knew how much asbestos the average American was living with. “No one has any kind of numbers,” Sandra Eberle, chemical hazards program manager of the Consumer Product Safety Commission toldThe New York Times in 1984. “We don’t have statistics on how many homes asbestos is in, and we don’t know whether or not it poses a hazard in those homes.”
Numbers continue to be hard to come by. As many other nations began enacting bans over the course of the rest of the 20th century, US efforts stalled. In 1989, under President George H.W. Bush, the EPA attempted to ban most products containing asbestos by 1997. The chemical lobby responded by suing the EPA.
A federal court overturned much of the ban in 1991 on technical grounds. It faulted the EPA for not adequately evaluating potentially less burdensome alternatives to asbestos and not comparing the toxicity of potential alternatives. Although the ruling was primarily concerned with the EPA’s process, Robert Pigg, a top asbestos trade-group executive, seized on it to claim: “We have known for many years that asbestos can be safely and securely bound in today’s products.”
While the EPA says that chrysotile asbestos is the “only known form” of the mineral still being used and imported to the United States, there are several other forms that the current regulation is silent on, leaving the door open for their use.
The result was three decades of mostly federal silence, with untold exposures to workers at plants still using asbestos. In the 2000s, companies such as Georgia Pacific tried to fend off lawsuits over its use of asbestos in its Ready-Mix joint compound in the 1960s and 70s with highly flawed counterfeit research.
In 2022, as the Biden administration launched its effort to ban chrysotile asbestos, ProPublica/National Public Radiointerviewed more than a dozen laborers who worked at a chlorine plant that operated until 2021 in Niagara Falls, New York. The story said “asbestos dust hung in the air, collected on the beams and light fixtures, and built up until it was inches thick. Workers tramped in and out of it all day, often without protective suits or masks, and carried it around on their coveralls and boots.”
One worker said, “We were constantly swimming in this stuff.”
Chemical Industry Wins Compromise
Yet, none other than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s highest-spending lobbying group, opposed the ban. It claimed, like Pigg in 1991, that the mineral “has been utilized safely in the United States for decades.” The American Chemistry Council unleashed a host of scare tactics. It claimed that an asbestos ban was itself a health hazard that could “cause substantial harm” to the nation’s drinking supply and retard “the production of products necessary to achieve our climate and sustainability goals including batteries, windmills, and solar panels.”
The council began pining for a 15-year phase-out period for asbestos. Two years later, the final rule clearly reflects a compromise, with the Biden administration saying it recognizes that converting chlorine facilities to non-asbestos technology “requires extensive construction, additional permits, specialized expertise, and parts for which there are limited suppliers.”
Even if that compromise holds up against lawsuits, the “final” rule is likely far from a final say on asbestos. While the EPA says that chrysotile asbestos is the “only known form” of the mineral still being used and imported to the United States, there are several other forms that the current regulation is silent on, leaving the door open for their use.
The journey has already spanned several generations to get to where we are on asbestos. We should not have to wait so long to deal with the rest of the chemical world.
There is also the unresolved issue of “legacy” asbestos installed in walls, ceilings, and flooring and basements over most of the 20th century. In older school buildings, a 2018 EPA Inspector General report said, “substantial amounts” of asbestos were sprayed for insulation and as fire retardants in school buildings, particularly from 1946 through 1972. A 2017 study by the Centers for Disease Control found that deaths from mesothelioma remained “substantial” and were increasing, likely due to workers maintaining or remediating older buildings with asbestos.
The EPA said it will release an evaluation of other types of asbestos and legacy uses by December. But the piecemeal approach is why advocates such as Linda Reinstein, co-founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, have long pushed for more sweeping federal legislation banning all asbestos fibers in products and requiring chlorine companies to convert to non-asbestos technology in two years, as the EPA had originally planned. Such legislation would make asbestos regulation less vulnerable to the highly variable whims of whoever is in the White House. The legislation is named for Reinstein’s late husband Alan, who died from mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer tied to asbestos exposure.
While Reinstein said in an interview that she was “delighted” that the EPA has issued its current rule, she remained highly concerned that there remain loopholes the asbestos-using industry can exploit, especially since she feels that little has changed in its mentality of putting “profits over people.” She emphasized, “This does not ban what you can find on a store shelf.”
A Painfully Long Journey
The protracted journey to any kind of asbestos ban is a sobering reminder of how long the United States takes to regulate chemicals on any shelf, such as menthol in tobacco products, PFAS “forever chemicals” in our water, pesticides in agricultural fields, and even cosmetics in the bathroom cabinet. National Public Radio’s “Living on Earth” recently featured a study from China finding that women undergoing in vitro fertilization who used skin care products were more likely to miscarry than women who did not use skin care products.
Cosmetics have increasingly been tied to endocrine disruption and cancers. The “Living on Earth” feature served as a reminder that here at home, the United States has banned only 11 chemicals in cosmetics, while the European Union has banned more than 1,300. Leonardo Trasande, director of New York University’s center of environmental hazards, told the program, “The more you unravel the onion, the more you realize–whoa, this is a bigger and more complicated story than you might be able to deal with fully in a lifetime.”
The journey has already spanned several generations to get to where we are on asbestos. We should not have to wait so long to deal with the rest of the chemical world. None other than Reinstein said it best: “What we do matters. What we don’t do matters even more.”
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The Companies Who Brought You Forever Chemicals Now Want to Sell You on Hydrogen
We should learn from the chemical industry’s track record on evading transparency and accountability to be suspicious of how responsibly this industry will develop clean hydrogen.
Mar 21, 2024
The very same chemical companies spending millions on lobbying against federal legislation and regulations that would force the chemical industry to clean up widespread “forever chemical” pollution are now going all-in on hydrogen as a “clean” form of energy.
We should learn from the chemical industry’s track record on evading transparency and accountability for the “forever chemicals” now found in the blood of up to 97% of Americans to be suspicious of how responsibly this industry will develop clean hydrogen.
For those unfamiliar with “forever chemicals,” also known as PFAS (short for per- and poly- fluoroalkyl substances), they are “a group of chemicals used to make fluoropolymer coatings and products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease, and water.” PFAS trigger scientific concern because, as the “forever chemicals” moniker suggests, they don’t break down in the environment, but instead stick around, building up in everything from soil to drinking water to the bodies of people and animals. PFAS have repeatedly made the news already in 2024, as new studies have come out indicating the widespread presence of PFAS in everything from nearly half of the U.S. drinking water supply to packaged tea and processed meats to turf sports fields.
The Biden administration must remain vigilant to the publicity campaigns and streams of lobbying money that extractive corporations deploy in their pursuit of maximal profits without regard to the impact on people, communities, and the planet.
PFAS are associated with a host of health risks. The EPA and CDC have acknowledged peer-reviewed scientific studies that show that exposure to PFAS may lead to reproductive and developmental effects in children, immune system damage, and increase the risk of developing cancer. Research is ongoing to confirm links between the various substances in the PFAS category and these and other worrying health outcomes.
Considering how blithely these companies shirk responsibility for polluting our environment to the extent that human fetusesand the rainnow show traces of forever chemicals, it’s hard to trust them when they say that hydrogen’s a climate winner.
Proponents of hydrogen laud it as a clean-burning alternative to natural gas and an energy carrier comparable to batteries. In reality, as we’ve written about at length, the vast majority of hydrogen production in the United States comes from a highly polluting process involving natural gas and steam. Hydrogen can be produced without natural gas, via electricity, but the vast majority of electricity is produced by fossil fueled power plants as well. So, while burning hydrogen is technically emissions-free, if the electrolysis used to create that hydrogen relies on fossil fuels or polluting forms of energy, the climate impact of “green” hydrogen can be worse than just burning fossil fuels. And due to how hydrogen interacts with other gasses in the atmosphere, hydrogen has over 32 times the indirect global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
These are some of the companies invested in the hydrogen economy that also lobbied aggressively against being on the hook for PFAS clean up:
- Chemours, which has been part of the aggressive, multimillion dollar lobbying blitz against strong PFAS clean up, is part of the Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association (FCHEA), a coalition of companies advocating for hydrogen as “clean, safe, and reliable.” It is worth noting Chemours opposed stronger hydrogen standards that would ensure they’re clean.
- 3M spent $17.9 million lobbying against the PFAS Act of 2019, which criminalized PFASS in sewers. 3M is currently expanding its research and redevelopment into green hydrogen.
- Dow spent $23.4 million on PFAS lobbying between 2019-2022, largely centered around the LIFT America Act (which would have created a grant program to help filter PFAS). In April, Dow selected Linde as a gas partner supplying hydrogen as a feedstock for Dow’s plastics facility in Canada.
- Honeywell, which spent $200,000 lobbying on the CLEAN Futures Act’s PFAS clean up assistance provisions, is also a member of the Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association.
- In 2021, Dominion Energy lobbied Congress in regards to the landmark Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included $2 billion in funding to address contaminants in drinking water like PFAS. Dominion Energy also happens to be a member of the Green Hydrogen Coalition.
- Siemens Energy also lobbied Congress in regards to the CLEAN Futures Act, and also happens to be a Green Hydrogen Coalition member.
- Norfolk Southern, which was party to a lawsuit from the Justice Department over the derailment and toxic chemical release in East Palestine, Ohio, lobbied Congress on the Infrastructure law as well, and utilized hydrogen in its technologies.
These companies have clearly demonstrated that they aren’t committed to preventing their products from poisoning communities. Not only did they fail to prevent widespread pollution in the first place; they then actively spent their money lobbying to argue that they shouldn’t have to clean up their own messes. Rather than, say, spending that money to clean up the messes.
These corporations’ and coalitions’ track records raise immediate red flags regarding the legitimacy of these corporation’s future claims about how clean their hydrogen production is—not that we needed more indicators, given the hydrogen risks and drawbacks that scientists and environmental advocates have been pointing out for years.
The Biden administration also has tools to crack down on many of these polluters. Recently, the FDA announced an initiative to stop the use of certain PFAS in food packaging, based on a “voluntary commitment” by companies to stop selling the products, which the FDA plans to continue to monitor. This kind of agreement should be rigorously reinforced by the use of investigations and penalties by the agencies entrusted with public health, to hold corporations accountable when they flout safety guidelines and laws.
In February, we commented on recent reporting by E&E News that the Energy Department was pushing the Treasury Department to align its clean hydrogen tax credit guidance with industrial polluters’ demands. We argued that it’s crucial that Treasury resist this industry pressure—even when it’s coming from their colleagues at the Energy Department—and address the potential loopholes in its tax credit guidance that could promote the growth of a so-called “clean” hydrogen industry that simply continues many forms of pollution.
The Biden administration must remain vigilant to the publicity campaigns and streams of lobbying money that extractive corporations deploy in their pursuit of maximal profits without regard to the impact on people, communities, and the planet. Otherwise, the same playbook we’ve seen with environmental and health disasters will continue to repeat itself—with continually escalating consequences.
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EPA Praised for Boost to 'Lifesaving' Protections From Chemical Incidents
One campaigner called it "a foundational step toward protecting the health and safety of communities and workers on the fenceline of the petrochemical industry."
Mar 01, 2024
Hazardous chemical incidents such as explosions, fires, and toxic releases happen almost daily in the United States, often at fossil fuel facilities, and the Biden administration won praise on Friday for stepping up safeguards for impacted communities.
Dionne Delli-Gatti, associate vice president of community engagement at Environmental Defense Fund, was among the public health and environmental justice advocates applauding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for what she called "a foundational step toward protecting the health and safety of communities and workers on the fenceline of the petrochemical industry."
The agency finalized changes to a Risk Management Program (RMP) that covers 11,740 facilities across the country. Noting that many communities "vulnerable to chemical accidents are in overburdened and underserved areas," EPA Administrator Michael Regan framed the rule as a key piece of the administration's "commitment to advancing environmental justice."
"The new rule, while not perfect, will go a long way to protect people's health."
Accidental releases from RMP facilities cost over $540 million annually and highly impact approximately 131 million people who live within three miles of such sites—including 44 million earning less than or equal to twice the poverty level, 32 million who identify as Hispanic or Latino, and 20 million who identify as Black or African American, according to EPA estimates.
"Over 1 in every 3 schoolchildren in the U.S. attends a school within the danger zone of these facilities. Children are uniquely vulnerable to the health impacts caused by toxic chemical exposures such as respiratory illnesses and cancers," said Moms Clean Air Force vice president Dominique Browning. "Moms—and all caregivers—support EPA's important step in the strengthening of the Risk Management Program. We urge EPA to swiftly implement and enforce the new rules to help protect the health and safety of all children."
As the EPA summarized, the amendments include:
- Requiring a safer technologies and alternatives analysis, and in some cases, implementation of reliable safeguard measures for certain facilities in industry sectors with high accident rates;
- Advancing employee participation, training, and opportunities for employee decision-making in facility accident prevention;
- Reiterating the allowance of a partial or complete process shutdown in the event of a potential catastrophic release;
- Implementing a process to allow employees and their representatives to anonymously report specific unaddressed hazards;
- Requiring third-party compliance audits and root cause analysis incident investigation for facilities that have had a prior accident;
- Enhancing facility planning and preparedness efforts to strengthen emergency response by ensuring chemical release information is timely shared with local responders and a community notification system is in place to warn the community of any impending release;
- Emphasizing the requirement for regulated facilities to evaluate risks of natural hazards and climate change, including any associated loss of power; and
- Increasing transparency by providing access to RMP facility information for communities nearby.
"While there is certainly more that must be done to prevent chemical disasters, EPA's rule is a major step forward for ensuring that the most hazardous facilities implement safer technologies and provide greater public access to information," said Earthjustice attorney Kathleen Riley. "We urge industry to implement these lifesaving measures without delay."
Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which brings together labor unions and environmental groups, also welcomed the update, stressing that "a strong RMP rule empowers workers and saves lives. It protects workers and emergency responders and safeguards communities in the shadow of these chemical facilities."
Jennifer Jones, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Center for Science and Democracy, pointed out that "the previous administration severely weakened those rules, depriving communities of information about what hazardous chemicals they might be exposed to and rolling back critical safety requirements intended to protect workers at facilities covered by the RMP."
"In recent years, hundreds of chemical incidents have occurred at facilities covered by the RMP—imposing a serious cost to workers and people living in harm's way, as well as to first responders and local governments that have to deal with the aftermath," Jones continued. "The new rule, while not perfect, will go a long way to protect people's health."
The Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, which has tracked incidents involving hazardous chemicals since January 2021, documented at least 323 events last year, at least 81 of which occurred at RMP facilities.
"We're glad that EPA stood its ground despite strong industry pressure and required more RMP facilities to report on safer chemicals and processes that could be implemented to prevent chemical disasters," Maya Nye, federal policy director at coalition member Coming Clean, said Friday. "This establishes an important precedent."
"We will continue urging EPA to require all RMP facilities to identify and transition to safer chemicals and processes in accordance with the principles laid out in the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals, as part of our ongoing work to transform the chemical industry so that it's no longer a source of harm," Nye added.
Michele Roberts, co-coordinator of another coalition member, the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, celebrated the EPA's new online database for RMP facilities, and highlighted that "communities have been asking for this information for decades."
"We have a right to know whether our houses, schools, and places of worship are threatened by a potential chemical disaster," she said. "We look forward to a time when a database on RMP facility and hazard information will no longer be needed because every facility will have transitioned to safe chemicals and processes, but in the meantime EPA making this critical information more accessible to communities is a huge step."
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