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‘Profits Over Safety’: Chemical Disasters Under Trump Pile Up as More Safety Cuts Loom
"Instead of protecting workers and families from death, injury, and illness, Trump’s EPA is putting communities at greater risk of harm," said the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters.
Jun 01, 2026
Two recent high-profile chemical plant disasters are putting a spotlight on the Trump administration's aggressive deregulation of the industry, with even more cuts to chemical safety regulations expected in the coming months.
The disasters—one at a paper mill in Washington state that killed 11 people and the other in an aerospace plastics facility in California that forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes—came after months of warnings from experts and labor unions about the impact of the administration's deregulatory agenda.
In late March, for instance, members of United Steelworkers (USW) rallied in Washington, DC to protest against a US Environmental Protection Agency plan to scrap regulations enacted under former President Joe Biden, which included "new safeguards such as identifying safer technologies and chemical alternatives, requiring implementation of safeguard measures in certain cases, more thorough incident investigations, and third-party auditing."
USW Local 13-228 process safety specialist Phil Stagg at the time warned that scrapping the rule would put "profits over safety" by prioritizing cost cutting over worker safety.
Following last week's twin disasters, the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters also pointed to plans to weaken Biden-era safety regulations as a grave mistake that will put American workers at greater risk.
"The fatal and shocking incidents communities have faced in recent days demonstrate the urgent need to implement and build on existing regulatory safeguards so communities near chemical facilities are protected from chemical disasters," the group said. "But, instead of protecting workers and families from death, injury, and illness, Trump’s EPA is putting communities at greater risk of harm by weakening the nation’s primary defense against chemical facility incidents."
The administration has also been targeting the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), an independent federal watchdog charged with investigating the root causes of industrial chemical accidents.
As The New York Times reported last month, Trump's proposed budget all but eliminates the CSB by cutting its funding down to $0 while arguing that the watchdog merely duplicates work already done by the EPA.
Rep. Marie Glusenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) said in a Sunday social media post that the CSB did essential work in preventing future accidents, and she vowed to fight the administration's plans to zero out its budget.
"I’ll be making it my priority ensuring [CSB] has the resources they need for a through, unbiased investigation," Perez said. "They also have three vacancies currently on that board of directors, and my hope is that we're able to work with the administration to ensure that people with real trades experience are appointed to that board."
The horrifying loss of life in Longview last week demands a thorough impartial investigation conducted by the independent watchdog Chemical Safety Board.
Unfortunately the presidents proposed budget has zeroed out the CSB budget.
Next week, I’ll be making it my priority to… pic.twitter.com/3SqbDSASWJ
— Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (@RepMGP) May 31, 2026
Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant secretary at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), explained in an interview published by Mountain State Spotlight last week that CSB produces invaluable work about chemical disasters' root causes, whereas the EPA's work focuses on whether disasters were caused by violating federal regulations.
In particular, Barab noted that CSB can "look at other problems, other causes that aren’t necessarily covered by regulations or standards," and added that "a lot of the ways the industry has modernized to improve safety are based on recommendations that came out of the CSB."
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EPA Promoting Fertilizer Full of PFAS Despite Knowing Risks
New reporting shows the EPA was warned over 20 years ago that sewage sludge contained high levels of so-called "forever chemicals."
Dec 27, 2024
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to promote a commonly used commercial fertilizer despite being informed over 20 years ago that its key component contained high levels of so-called "forever chemicals," a New York Times investigation revealed Friday.
The
Times' Hiroko Tabuchi reviewed thousands of pages of decades-old documents and found that scientists at chemical giant 3M discovered high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in U.S. sewage during the early 2000s. Sewage sludge is in widespread use as farm fertilizer. PFAS are called forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the environment and the human body. They have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware and waterproof clothing to firefighting foam and pesticides.
Officials at 3M—whose researchers had already linked PFAS to cancer, birth defects, and other ailments—informed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of its findings in 2003.
"The EPA continues to promote sewage sludge as fertilizer and doesn't require testing for PFAS."
However, as Tabuchi noted, "the EPA continues to promote sewage sludge as fertilizer and doesn't require testing for PFAS, despite the fact that whistleblowers, academics, state officials, and the agency's internal studies over the years have also raised contamination concerns."
According to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, PFAS are linked to cancers of the kidneys and testicles, low infant weight, suppressed immune function, and other adverse health effects. They are found in the blood of around 99% of people around the world. EPA data show there's PFAS in the drinking water of tens of millions of Americans.
According to Tabuchi, EPA experts raised concerns about PFAS as far back as the 1990s, but their warnings went unheeded.
The
Times investigation follows reporting earlier this month led by Prism's Rebecca Barglowski showing that EPA and state officials in New Jersey have known about PFAS-contaminated water for nearly two decades.
Tabuchi noted that "the country is starting to wake up to the consequences" of PFAS' ubiquity. However, only one state—Maine—has begun systematically testing farms for PFAS. It has also banned the use of sewage sludge to fertilize fields.
At the federal level, the Biden administration in 2021 published its first "PFAS Strategic Roadmap" and designated forever chemicals "an urgent public health and environmental issue." Earlier this year, the EPA finalized a new Superfund rule meant to "help ensure that polluters pay to clean up their contamination" across the nation.
However, the chemical industry is fighting efforts to tackle PFAS, including through the use of research experts have called biased. Experts have also warned that the incoming administration of Republican President-elect Donald Trump will roll back Biden-era regulations, disempower agency specialists, and let political appointees make crucial regulatory decisions.
Even under Biden, the EPA is arguing that it cannot be sued for taking inadequate action to protect the public from PFAS contamination.
In June, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
sued the EPA on behalf of a group of farmers, ranchers, and green groups "for failing to perform its nondiscretionary duty to identify and regulate toxic pollutants in sewage sludge" used as fertilizer. In September, the EPA moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it has complete discretion regarding the identification and listing of pollutants.
"EPA seems to have lost any sense of its legal and moral obligation to protect public health," attorney and former EPA scientist Kyla Bennett said at the time. "Under the plain language of the Clean Water Act, EPA has a mandatory duty to identify and regulate substances that are a threat to human health and the environment—not just to issue a report about it."
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EPA Bans Known Carcinogens Used in Dry Cleaning, Other Industries
"Both of these chemicals have caused too much harm for too long, despite the existence of safer alternatives," said one environmental campaigner.
Dec 09, 2024
The Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a permanent ban on a pair of carcinogenic chemicals widely used in U.S. industries, including dry cleaning services and automative work.
According to the Washington Post:
The announcement includes the complete ban of trichloroethylene—also known as TCE—a substance found in common consumer and manufacturing products including degreasing agents, furniture care and auto repair products. In addition, the agency banned all consumer uses and many commercial uses of Perc—also known as tetrachloroethylene and PCE — an industrial solvent long used in applications such as dry cleaning and auto repair.
Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, applauded the move but suggested to the Post that it should have come sooner.
"Both of these chemicals have caused too much harm for too long, despite the existence of safer alternatives," Kalmuss-Katz.
The EPA's decision, reports the New York Times, was "long sought by environmental and health advocates, even as they braced for what could be a wave of deregulation by the incoming Trump administration."
The Times reports:
TCE is known to cause liver cancer, kidney cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and to damage the nervous and immune systems. It has been found in drinking water nationwide and was the subject of a 1995 book that became a movie, “A Civil Action,” starring John Travolta. The E.P.A. is banning all uses of the chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which was overhauled in 2016 to give the agency greater authority to regulate harmful chemicals.
Though deemed "less harmful" than TCE, the Times notes how Perc has been shown to "cause liver, kidney, brain and testicular cancer," and can also damage the functioning of kidneys, the liver, and people's immune systems.
Environmentalists celebrated last year when Biden's EPA proposed the ban on TCE, as Common Dreams reported.
Responding to the news at the time, Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said the EPA, by putting the ban on the table, was "once again putting the health of workers and consumers first."
While President-elect Donald Trump ran on a having an environmental agenda that would foster the "cleanest air" and the "cleanest water," the late approval of EPA's ban on TCE and Perc in Biden's term means the rule will be subject to the Congressional Review Act (CRA), meaning the Republican-control Senate could reverse the measure.
In his remarks to the Times, Kalmuss-Katz of Earthjustice said that if Trump and Senate Republicans try to roll back the ban, they will be certain to "encounter serious opposition from communities across the country that have been devastated by TCE, in both blue and red states."
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40 Years of Suffering and Injustice Since Bhopal Disaster
We should never forget that Dow Chemical was behind the infamous 1984 chemical leak in India. Neither should we forget the courage of those who have never stopped fighting for justice on behalf of the victims.
Dec 02, 2024
Shortly before midnight on December 2, 1984, a terrible cloud, consisting of tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate (MIC), along with other chemicals, began to leak into the atmosphere from the storage tank of the U.S. multinational corporation Union Carbide Corporation (UCC)’s pesticide plant on the outskirts of Bhopal in central India.
The immediate consequences of the mass poisoning were catastrophic. As many as 10,000 people are believed to have died within three days of the leak.
As the world marks the 40th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, what lessons should we take from what happened on that awful night? I think perhaps there are at least three important ones. Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, is that a single tragic event can have consequences that last generations.
As well as those who succumbed to the gas in the first few hours, many thousands more people were exposed to it, and they continue to suffer from a range of chronic and debilitating illnesses. It is now estimated that more than 22,000 people have died as a direct result of exposure to the leak, while more than half a million people continue to suffer some degree of permanent injury.
Shockingly, it is not only people exposed to the gas directly who have been affected. Over the years that followed, a large number of children born to gas-exposed parents have been affected by growth retardation, birth defects and other medical conditions.
As well as those who succumbed to the gas in the first few hours, many thousands more people were exposed to it, and they continue to suffer from a range of chronic and debilitating illnesses.
Meanwhile, to this day, thousands of tons of toxic waste remain buried in and around the abandoned plant. This has contaminated residents’ water supplies and harmed their health, adding to the already dismal health status of gas-exposed residents.
As well as the health impacts, the tragedy has pushed already impoverished communities into further destitution. In many families, the main wage earner died or became too ill to work. Women and children suffered disproportionately.
An unfortunate second lesson of the Bhopal tragedy is how easy it has been for UCC to escape accountability. Pitted against the largely poor victims of the gas disaster was the hugely powerful and enormously rich multinational corporation, which escaped providing the survivors, their children and grandchildren with adequate compensation and medical care.
The catastrophic gas leak was the foreseeable result of innumerable operational failures at the plant, but from the start, UCC’s response to the disaster was inadequate and callous. For example, although thousands of people were dying from gas exposure, or suffering agonizing injuries, UCC withheld critical information regarding MIC’s toxicological properties, undermining the effectiveness of the medical response. To this day, UCC has failed to name any of the chemicals and reaction products that leaked along with MIC on that fateful night.
In 1989, without consulting Bhopal Gas Tragedy survivors, the Indian government and UCC reached an out-of-court compensation settlement for $470 million. This amount was less than 15 percent of the initial amount sought by the government, and far less than most estimates of the damage at the time. Thousands of claims were not registered at all, including those of gas-exposed children under the age of 18, and children born to gas-affected parents who, time later showed, were also severely affected.
There have been numerous attempts to hold UCC and individuals to account, either through criminal or civil claim proceedings launched in India and the U.S. But these have had no or very limited results.
One challenge has been created by the restructuring of the business entities involved in the tragedy. UCC sold off the India-registered subsidiary that operated the plant. It was then, in turn, bought by another giant U.S. corporation, the Dow Chemical Company (Dow). To this day, Dow shamefully claims it bears no responsibility since it “never owned or operated the plant” and that UCC only became a subsidiary of Dow 16 years after the accident.
In 2010, the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court in Bhopal found seven Indian nationals, as well as UCC’s India-based subsidiary guilty of causing death by negligence. By contrast, U.S. individuals and companies have escaped punishment, and there is significant evidence that the U.S. authorities have helped protect them.
Companies have a responsibility to respect human rights wherever they operate. Dow may not have caused the gas leak, but it became directly linked to the tragedy after it bought UCC. The company boasts of following the highest human rights standards, but its continued failure to respond to the urgent needs of the survivors is utterly disgraceful.
But there is a third lesson to draw from the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and its aftermath. It can be found in the inspiring story of the survivor groups and their supporters, who over 40 years have refused to give up their fight for justice. They have initiated or intervened in many legal actions; conducted scientific research into the contamination and health impacts; and they have launched practical initiatives in the absence of sufficient state and corporate support. For example, in 1994, survivor groups fundraised for the Sambhavna Trust Clinic and they later opened the Chingari Rehabilitation Centre. Thousands of gas- and contamination-affected adults and children have benefitted from the highly specialized and professional medical care and rehabilitation provided by these institutions – unparalleled by any of the government-run facilities.
Their campaigning has also meant that Dow has never been able to disassociate itself from the Bhopal disaster. Until it finally addresses the needs of the survivors, their campaign will continue.
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Toxic Trump Was Not Good for Your Health
The far-right Republican's track record shows complete fealty to corporate polluters, Big Ag, and the chemical industry—those responsible for most of our toxic pollution and a food system that puts profits over human well being.
Oct 22, 2024
While it is rarely a top campaign issue, Americans care deeply about our health and well-being, the food we put in our bodies, and what corporations put into our food—especially when it comes to our children. We all want to know our food is safe and free of dangerous chemicals and additives that can cause serious health problems.
This electoral season, many Americans are asking: Who will make America healthier, Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump?
The difference is stark: Widespread evidence shows that Trump’s presidency rolled back many regulations governing toxic chemicals, while the Biden-Harris Administration acted to reduce our exposure to toxic chemicals.
In July 2017, a few months after taking office, Trump reversed a pending ban on the insecticide chlorpyrifos—a brain-damaging chemical linked to ADHD and autism. Chlorpyrifos is so toxic there are no determined safe consumption levels for infants and children. The reversal came after Trump met with the CEO of Dow Chemical, chlorypifos’s biggest manufacturer—and after the company donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration ceremony.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found levels of this pesticide are up to 140 times the limits deemed safe for adults in foods kids regularly eat.
On taking office, Biden-Harris restored that ban to protect our health.
Trump’s EPA approved more than 100 new pesticide products, many containing ingredients so toxic that they have been banned in other countries. Half a dozen new products, for example, contained the chemical paraquat, a substance so deadly that ingesting a spoonful can be fatal. Seventeen of these products contained the potent hormone disruptor atrazine, and several other Trump-approved products included the dangerous airborne fumigant methyl bromide.
Trump’s EPA also failed to act on PFAS, known as “forever chemicals,” found in our food, air, water, and even breast milk. These substances are linked to cancer, birth defects, thyroid disease, weakened immunity, and reproductive harm.
In contrast, Biden-Harris issued the first-ever drinking water standard for PFAS, investing more than $1 billion to protect Americans from these deadly chemicals.
The Trump Administration appointed a former chemical industry lobbyist to head the EPA’s division on chemical oversight. Under Trump, the agency rolled back a whopping 112 environmental protections, including regulations protecting our air and water and controlling many toxic substances. The Biden-Harris Administration has revived and strengthened many of these critical protections.
Trump further endangered our food and health by abolishing stronger organic animal welfare rules aimed at making our meat supply healthier for both people and animals. The Biden-Harris Administration restored these protections. Trump caused additional harm when he reversed limits on bee-killing and neurotoxic neonicotinoid (or “neonic”) pesticides in national wildlife refuges and signed an executive order scaling back regulations on GMOs.
Now, as if to magically erase these truths, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has launched a “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) campaign on Trump’s behalf. Kennedy insists Trump would end Big Food’s influence over federal health policies, “ban the hundreds of food additives and chemicals that other countries have already prohibited,” change policies and regulations to reduce processed foods, and “clean up toxic chemicals from our air, water and soil.”
While Kennedy raises important points about the corporate capture over food and health policy, the facts show these claims have no basis in reality. Kennedy’s MAHA bid is completely contradicted by Trump’s track record and the interests of his biggest corporate backers, including Big Agriculture and the chemical industry.
And Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump term authored in large part by Trump’s former staffers, is a repudiation of Kennedy’s “MAHA” goals—calling for massive deregulation that will only exacerbate the problems Kennedy rightly identifies. This includes removing GMO labeling and federal inspection requirements for meat and poultry processing; weakening the Endangered Species Act; reducing the influence of EPA science on pesticide approvals; and undermining or even eliminating the science-backed Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
That’s not a recipe for a healthier, less toxic America. For all Americans, especially parents, who are rightly concerned about toxic chemicals in our food and environment, Kamala Harris is by far the better choice.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.
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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 Times feature 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 told The 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 Radio interviewed 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 fetuses and the rain now 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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UN Experts Allege Human Rights Violations by PFAS Chemical Giant in North Carolina
In a letter to Chemours, the experts said they were worried about the company's "apparent disregard for the well-being of community members, who have been denied access to clean and safe water for decades."
Nov 28, 2023
United Nations human rights experts have expressed concerns over "alleged human rights violations and abuses" against people living along the lower Cape Fear River in North Carolina due emissions of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from a Fayetteville chemical plant.
Five U.N. experts signed letters to Chemours—the plant's current operator—as well as DuPont, Corteva, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Dutch environmental regulators. The action marks the U.N. Human Rights Council's first investigation into an environmental problem in the U.S., The Guardian reported Tuesday.
"We are especially concerned about DuPont and Chemours' apparent disregard for the well-being of community members, who have been denied access to clean and safe water for decades," the U.N. experts wrote in the letter to Chemours.
"We hope the U.N.'s action will induce shareholders to bring DuPont and Chemours in line with international human rights law."
The Fayetteville Works manufacturing plant has been releasing toxic PFAS into the environment for more than four decades, according to the allegations detailed in the letter. PFAS dumped in the Cape Fear River have made it unsafe to drink for 100 river miles, and pollution from the plant has contaminated air, soil, groundwater, and aquatic life.
PFAS are a class of chemicals used in a variety of products from nonstick, water-repellent, or stain-resistant items to firefighting foam. They have been linked to a number of health issues including cancers and have earned the name "forever chemicals" for their ability to persist in the environment and the human body. One study found PFAS in 97% of local residents who received testing.
The letter also repeated allegations that DuPont, the plant's previous owner, and Chemours, a spinoff company, had not taken responsibility for cleaning up the local environment and compensating community members, and that DuPont had known about the dangers of PFAS for several years, but chose to hide this information from the public.
"We remain preoccupied that these actions infringe on community members' right to life, right to health, right to a healthy, clean, and sustainable environment, and the right to clean water, among others," the U.N. experts wrote.
The letters were sent in response to a request made in April by Berkeley Law's Environmental Law Clinic on behalf of local environmental advocacy group Clean Cape Fear. In the request, the groups said the matter was particularly urgent because Chemours plans to expand its making of PFAS at the plant.
The U.N. experts, or special rapporteurs, reviewed existing legal and scientific documents and media reports, rather than completing their own investigation, NC Newsline reported. They sent the letters in September, but made them public on Thanksgiving, 60 days later, according to Clean Cape Fear. During that time, Chemours, Corteva, and the Dutch regulator responded, but DuPont and the EPA did not.
"We are grateful to see the United Nations take action on behalf of all residents in our region suffering from decades of human rights abuse related to our PFAS contamination crisis," Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan said in a statement. "Clearly, the U.N. recognizes international law is being violated in the United States. We find it profoundly troubling that the United States and DuPont have yet to respond to the U.N.'s allegation letters."
Clean Cape Fear called Chemours' response "classic corporate gaslighting." Chemours claimed to be "a relatively new company," despite being staffed by senior DuPont executives, focused mainly on the PFAS GenX despite the presence of several other pollutants, and focused on the impacts on private well owners, ignoring public utility customers who must pay to filter their own water because of PFAS contamination. However, the letter did acknowledge that Chemours knew about the PFAS pollution before the public learned of it in 2017 and tried to both resolve it internally and prevent the public from finding out.
"If corporate malfeasance had a name in N.C., it would be Chemours," said Rebecca Trammel, leadership team member of Clean Cape Fear and founder of Catalyst Consulting & Speaking. "Impunity is the accomplice of injustice. It is the obligation of governments and regulatory agencies to ensure that innovation, economic gain, and progress are in service of humanity, not at its expense. I extend my deepest thanks to the United Nations for its defense of our right to safe water and life itself."
The letter to the EPA focused in part on its failure to study the health impacts of PFAS exposure on the community, while the letter to the Netherlands focused on imports of GenX from that country to Fayetteville Works.
Clean Cape Fear said it hopes the letters will put pressure on both the private companies and the government regulators to act.
"We hope the U.N.'s action will induce shareholders to bring DuPont and Chemours in line with international human rights law," the group tweeted, noting that both companies are publicly traded.
"We also hope that the risk of being named a violator of international human rights laws will give the U.S. EPA the political courage to do what it must to curb toxic PFAS pollution in North Carolina and nationwide," the group added.
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Companies Pushing Weak UN Plastics Treaty Dump Millions Into US Elections
"The only way to curb our catastrophic plastic pollution problem is to cut plastic production, but the industry is spending big to block action at every level to protect their profits," said one campaigner.
Nov 17, 2023
Major multinational corporations attending negotiations for a global plastics treaty in an effort to weaken the agreement spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and political contributions during the 2022 election cycle, revealed an analysis published Friday by the Center for Biological Diversity.
As Common Dreams reported this week, 143 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists registered to attend the third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) in Nairobi, Kenya, which is scheduled to run through Sunday. That's more than the combined delegations from 70 nations, and far surpasses the 38 members of a scientists' coalition participating in the negotiations.
Representatives of companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Dow are among the registered attendees. Industry lobby groups representing hundreds of companies are also attending the talks, including the American Chemistry Council, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and the International Council of Beverages Associations.
"These companies came to Nairobi to make sure the world doesn't get strong protections against the plastic havoc they've been wreaking."
With over $20 million spent on lobbying and campaign contributions during the 2022 election cycle, the American Chemistry Council topped the Center for Biological Diversity's (CBD) list, which is based on data from the government watchdog group OpenSecrets. Boeing spent more than $17 million, while Chevron shelled out nearly $15 million.
"These companies came to Nairobi to make sure the world doesn't get strong protections against the plastic havoc they've been wreaking," David Derrick, a CBD attorney attending INC-3, said in a statement. "We knew that industry had way too much influence over the global plastics treaty as well as our political system at home, but these dollar amounts highlight how far petrochemical and consumer goods companies will go to keep polluting."
INC-3 is focused on the so-called zero draft of the legally binding plastics treaty. On Thursday, the fourth day of talks, delegates completed a first reading of the zero draft, with participating nations submitting suggestions for what they believe should be included in the treaty's first draft, which will be the basis of negotiations at INC-4, scheduled to take place next October and November in Ottawa, Canada.
Susan McCarthy, media and external affairs director at World Wildlife Fund U.S., said that "what is worrying... is the voluminous amount of suggestions that member states have submitted."
"This creates the temptation for member states to veer towards compromises that have the potential of watering down the eventual treaty in an effort to include as many suggestions as possible," she continued. "Whittling down a massive list to a number of key priorities can also be onerous, and can result in the convergence we're seeing now fragmenting as member states push for their suggested items."
"Fragmentation can occur as different member states may have different priorities, such as political affiliations or a preference to base decisions only on scientific evidence, which could drive the decision-making process in opposing directions," McCarthy added.
Derrick asserted that "the only way to curb our catastrophic plastic pollution problem is to cut plastic production, but the industry is spending big to block action at every level to protect their profits."
"The world has a historic chance to make a difference in the relentless flood of plastic pollution that's harming so many," he added. "We can't let a relatively small number of profit-hungry companies derail such an important opportunity to fix our plastic problem at its source."
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