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asbestos
Industry Braces for PFAS Lawsuits That Could 'Dwarf' Those of Asbestos, Tobacco
The warning of litigation to plastics makers comes as EPA is accused of failing to adequately test for "forever chemicals" in pesticides.
May 29, 2024
A newly reported warning to the plastics industry and a complaint filed by an environmental nonprofit this week highlighted how companies and the U.S. government have endangered the public with "forever chemical" contamination.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are commonly called forever chemicals because they remain in the human body and environment for long periods. They have been used in products such as firefighting foam, food packaging, stain-resistant fabrics, and pesticides, and linked to various health problems including cancers and issues with reproduction.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that attorney Brian Gross recently told plastics executives that looming corporate liability litigation related to PFAS—some of which has already begun—could "dwarf anything related to asbestos," and lead to "astronomical" costs.
As the newspaper detailed:
"Do what you can, while you can, before you get sued," Mr. Gross said at the February session, according to a recording of the event made by a participant and examined by The New York Times. "Review any marketing materials or other communications that you've had with your customers, with your suppliers, see whether there's anything in those documents that's problematic to your defense," he said. "Weed out people and find the right witness to represent your company."
A spokesman for Mr. Gross' employer, MG+M The Law Firm, which defends companies in high-stakes litigation, didn't respond to questions about Mr. Gross' remarks and said he was unavailable to discuss them.
While Gross declined to comment, Emily M. Lamond, who focuses on environmental law at the firm Cole Schotz, told the Times that "to say that the floodgates are opening is an understatement."
"Take tobacco, asbestos, MTBE, combine them, and I think we're still going to see more PFAS-related litigation," Lamond said, referring to methyl tert-butyl ether. The newspaper noted that "together, the trio led to claims totaling hundreds of billions of dollars."
Back in 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that DuPont would "pay $10.25 million—the largest civil administrative penalty EPA has ever obtained under any federal environmental statute—to settle violations alleged by EPA" related to PFAS and commit to $6.25 million for supplemental environmental projects.
The EPA has also taken more recent actions under President Joe Biden's "PFAS Strategic Roadmap," including designating perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) as hazardous substances under the Superfund law and setting the country's first-ever drinking water standards for those and other forever chemicals.
The Biden administration's steps, as the Times pointed out, are expected to fuel future litigation. Green groups have called the EPA's recent moves progress but not nearly enough—and as Capital B reported earlier this month, there are concerns that PFAS cleanup could disproportionately burden communities home to the working class and people of color.
On top of calls to go further with regulation and cleanup efforts, the EPA is facing pressure to retract what Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) called "false statements" in a 2023 agency research memo and press release. The group filed a formal complaint with the EPA on Tuesday demanding a correction.
"This memo is some of the worst science I have seen come out of the agency," said PEER science policy director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and former EPA attorney, in a statement. "The fact that EPA claimed it could not find any PFAS in samples deliberately spiked is incredibly troubling."
"Scientists around the world are finding PFAS in pesticides from active and inert ingredients, contamination from fluorinated containers, and unknown sources," she continued. "EPA's claim that it 'did not find any PFAS' in these pesticides is not only untrue but lulls the public into a false sense of security that these products are PFAS-free."
Asked about PEER's submission by journalist Carey Gillam, the agency—which has 90 days to respond—said that "because these issues relate to a pending formal complaint process, EPA has no further information to provide."
Gillam reported that "joining in the allegations is environmental toxicologist Steven Lasee, who authored the 2022 study that the EPA challenged. Lasee is a consultant for state and federal government agencies on PFAS contamination projects and participated as a research fellow for the EPA's Office of Research and Development from February 2021 to February 2023."
As Gillam detailed at New Lede and The Guardian:
Amid the uproar over his paper and the subsequent EPA testing, Lasee sought to reproduce his initial results but was unable to do so. That created enough doubt about his own methodology that he sought to retract his paper.
Now, after seeing the EPA's internal testing data showing the agency did find PFOS and other types of PFAS in pesticides but failed to disclose those results, he has a new level of doubt—over the credibility of the agency.
"When you cherrypick data, you can make it say whatever you want it to say," Lasee said.
PEER's Bennett similarly said that "you don't get to just ignore the stuff that doesn't support your hypothesis. That is not science. That is corruption. I can only think that they were getting pressure from pesticide companies."
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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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When Will We Hold the Murderous Sociopathic Big Oil Executives to Account?
Today there are families all across the country who are mourning the loss of their loved ones to climate-change-fueled floods, heatstroke, and violent weather as much as I grieved my father’s death at the hands of the asbestos industry executives.
Mar 23, 2024
When my mom got pregnant with me in 1950, my dad, whose lifetime ambition had been to be a history professor, decided to abandon the GI Bill, drop out of college, and go to work in a steel plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan to financially prepare for their new arrival. It was hot, dirty work and the steel came out of the furnace over asbestos-covered rollers, leaving Dad working in a cloud of the stuff.
In 2006, Dad was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an insanely painful and ultimately 100% deadly disease. I tracked down a lawyer who did suits on behalf of asbestos victims, and he showed up to depose Dad on videotape along with more than a dozen asbestos industry lawyers, several of whom were quite verbally abusive to Dad. They barely fit into my parent’s small living room and left my father in tears.
After the lawyers’ fees, I think Mom ended up with around $135,000, which was better than nothing, although the industry lawyers had filed an appeal that forced him back to the hospital for a painful second biopsy to “prove” he had mesothelioma. And then they procrastinated so long that the money didn’t come until after he’d died. These were Trump-style-relentless lawyers representing a murderous industry that had known since the 1930s that their product caused this exact disease.
Every senior executive in the industry for the more-than-70 years between the time they discovered how deadly asbestos was and my Dad’s death knew. And participated in the cover-up.
Just like the executives in the tobacco industry, who have known with certainty that they were peddling death and disease since the 1940s and are today responsible for an estimated half-million American deaths every year, including my younger brother Stan who died of COPD last year.
“Psychopath” is the only word that adequately describes these executives, their decision-making employees, and their hired-gun marketers who make millions knowingly selling poisons.
And now comes the fossil fuel industry, with a whole new crop of psychopathic executives, marketers, and attorneys. Burning their products produces air pollution that causes asthma, cancer, heart disease, and strokes; according to Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Medicine, an estimated 350,000 Americans die prematurely every year because of this industry’s products.
And that doesn’t scratch the surface of the death and destruction on the horizon, as severe weather driven by global warming from fossil fuel emissions kick in. Such events have cost America over $2 trillion and more than 16,000 lives just since Ronald Reagan began denying the science in 1980. Over 60,000 people died in Europe just last year from a series of severe heatwaves.
A new study from the international NGO Global Witness documents how there could be 11.5 million excess deaths from global warming worldwide by 2100 just based on the emissions of five companies between now and 26 years from now: Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil, and Chevron.
And now we learned that the industry, which has been publicly praising the Paris Accords around reducing emissions and getting climate change under control, have been lying to us again and instead are — across the board — increasing their production of their toxic products.
This and other analyses of the death and destruction wrought by the fossil fuel industry’s carbon pollution have led a number of legal experts to suggest that now may be the time to lay the foundation for the prosecution of fossil fuel companies and their executives for murder or, at the least, manslaughter.
This would not be a new or novel event.
California utility PG&E was convicted of multiple manslaughter counts and paid $3.5 million in fines when their decision to use money that could have upgraded or buried their power lines — but instead went to millions in bonuses and stock buy-backs for their senior executives — led to the death of 85 people in the Camp Fire that consumed the town of Paradise.
Similarly, when BP’s failure to properly use and maintain their blowout preventers led to 11 deaths (and a massive oil spill) in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, that company pleaded guilty to manslaughter. BP and PG&E ultimately paid billions in fines and compensation.
A new analysis published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2024) titled Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths lays out the case for holding fossil fuel industry executives and their companies accountable for the deaths they are causing as you read these words.
“For decades,” the authors write, “fossil fuel companies (‘FFCs’) have known that their product causes ‘globally catastrophic’ climate change. Rather than warn the public or alter their business models, they waged a multi-decade disinformation campaign to sow doubt and delay regulatory responses.
“Today, as experts continue developing and delivering ever more detailed and precise warnings of climate catastrophe, and vast numbers of people are killed at an accelerating rate by wildfires, floods, droughts, heatwaves, and other climate-related calamities, FFCs continue to expand the production, marketing, and sale of the products they have long understood to cause mass death.
“Activists and journalists have called executives of major oil companies ‘mass murderers,’ lamenting that ‘millions of human beings will die so that they can have private planes and huge mansions,’ and a growing chorus of communities devastated by FFCs’ lethal conduct have begun to demand accountability.”
The authors are blunt, arguing that these executives and their companies are knowingly complicit in the deaths of millions of people in America and around the world, with the numbers starting to explode as we cross multiple climate tipping points.
And still, like the asbestos and tobacco executives of the last century, instead of mitigating the harms of their products, they instead fight every effort at transparency or accountability.
“As additional evidence of FFCs’ knowledge of the lethal risks they were generating surfaces through leaks and court-mandated discovery, obstacles to a successful prosecution [for murder or manslaughter] are falling away. At the same time, with every new wave of climate-related deaths, the justification for prosecution grows.
“Although some of the harmful externalities that FFCs generate may be suitable for tort or regulatory suits, the lethality of FFCs’ conduct, their awareness of the risks they are generating, and their efforts to obscure those risks make criminal prosecution for homicide particularly appropriate.
“Perhaps most importantly, if FFCs continue to fight against all major efforts to reduce the harms they are generating, and if they continue to obstruct or delay state and federal regulation and civil suits designed to reduce the lethal impact of their conduct, then homicide prosecutions may prove necessary to prevent the escalating threat that their lethal conduct poses to millions of potential victims in the United States.”
Indeed, at a conference in Houston this week, Saudi Aramco’s CEO, Amin Nasser, was explicit with a comment that drew loud applause from his oil industry audience:
“We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas, and instead invest in them adequately.”
Similarly, Fortune magazine reported last month that the fossil fuel industry is positioning itself to be the largest donor to the Trump campaign, having already given him over $7 million following his recent promises to “drill, baby, drill” and to end all subsidies for electric vehicles and solar or wind power projects.
And, in response to President Biden’s tightening emission standards, the largest fossil fuel lobbying group has proudly announced an “8-figure” advertising campaign called “Lights On” to, as American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers told CNN, “dismantle policy threats” to the industry.
Commenting on it, The Los Angeles Times editorial board was emphatic:
“Californians should be wise enough to see this messaging for what it is: The behavior of a threatened, greed-driven industry trying to trick us into letting it hold onto its dirty and harmful old ways of doing business.”
This denial of the crisis and doubling down on advertising and more emissions is, of course, no solution.
In past articles here on Hartmann Report, I’ve argued for the US government to nationalize the three largest American fossil fuel companies by purchasing their stock in the marketplace; the total cost would be less than the Trump tax cuts for billionaires, and with new management the companies could help our nation’s transition away from its addiction to oil, coal, and natural gas.
Today there are families all across the country who are mourning the loss of their loved ones to climate-change-fueled floods, heatstroke, and violent weather as much as I grieved my father’s death at the hands of the asbestos industry executives.
They deserve justice, and the industry needs a wake-up call like the asbestos industry got in the late 1990s, leading to a wave of bankruptcies.
Holding murderous executives and their rogue companies bent on profiting from unnecessary death and destruction is imperative. As New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin noted a few months ago:
“Based on their own research, these companies understood decades ago that their products were causing climate change and would have devastating environmental impacts down the road.
“They went to great lengths to hide the truth and mislead the people of New Jersey and the world. In short, these companies put their profits ahead of our safety. It’s long overdue that the facts be aired in a New Jersey court and the perpetrators of the disinformation campaign pay for the harms they’ve caused.”
The men (they were almost certainly all men) who made the intentional decision to murder my father for profit are long dead; the men and women who today are plotting to render much of our beautiful planet uninhabitable are very much with us.
It’s beyond time to hold them accountable.
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EPA Announces 'Long-Overdue' Asbestos Ban
"Today's EPA rule to ban the use of chrysotile asbestos is a groundbreaking, landmark protection," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler. "Unions have been sounding the alarm on this dangerous substance for decades."
Mar 18, 2024
Labor and environmental advocates on Monday applauded the Environmental Protection Agency for finalizing a ban on the last remaining type of asbestos used in the United States eight years after Congress amended the nation's chemical safety law to accelerate the phaseout of the carcinogenic substance.
The EPA announced a final rule to prohibit ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos, which is found in a wide range of products including asbestos diaphragms, sheet gaskets, brake blocks, and aftermarket automotive brakes and linings. In a rare display of election-year bipartisanship, Congress voted nearly unanimously in 2016 to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act to update and strengthen the nation's chemical safety laws.
"Today's rule is a positive first step to give all Americans a future free of exposure to asbestos—a carcinogen that has killed far too many."
Asbestos exposure can cause mesothelioma as well as laryngeal, lung, and ovarian cancer. Banned in more than 50 countries, the substance is linked to more than 40,000 U.S. deaths each year.
"The science is clear—asbestos is a known carcinogen that has severe impacts on public health," said EPA Administrator Michael Regan. "President [Joe] Biden understands that this concern has spanned generations and impacted the lives of countless people. That's why EPA is so proud to finalize this long-needed ban on ongoing uses of asbestos."
The Congressional Progressive Caucus said on social media that "this new asbestos ban is long-overdue and will save thousands of lives."
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said in a statement that "today's rule is a positive first step to give all Americans a future free of exposure to asbestos—a carcinogen that has killed far too many."
"An immediate ban on the import of chrysotile asbestos for the chlor-alkali industry is a long-overdue step forward for public health," he added.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO union, hailed the EPA's "groundbreaking, landmark protection," adding that "unions have been sounding the alarm on this dangerous substance for decades."
Green groups echoed labor unions in welcoming the EPA move. Environmental Working Group senior vice president Scott Faber said that "it's been more than 50 years since EPA first sought to ban some uses of asbestos and we're closer than ever to finishing the job."
"For too long, polluters have been allowed to make, use, and release toxins like asbestos and PFAS without regard for our health," Faber added, referring to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly called forever chemicals. "Thanks to the leadership of the Biden EPA, those days are finally over."
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Trump's Toxic Wake: 10 Ways the EPA Has Made Life More Hazardous
The Trump EPA has aggressively worked to erode and eliminate vital environmental and public health protections.
Aug 21, 2020
From the beginning, the Trump administration has aggressively slashed environmental regulations. A New York Times analysis identified 100 environmental protections that have been reversed or are in the process of getting rolled back. The administration's record on chemical safety has been especially hazardous for the health of Americans, especially children.
One year into President Trump's term, EWG detailed how the Trump administration has stacked the Environmental Protection Agency with industry lawyers and lobbyists, undermined worker safety and cooked the books on chemical safety assessments. Midway through his second year, we reported how the EPA reversed a ban on a brain-damaging pesticide, delayed chemical bans and killed a rule to protect kids from toxic PCBs in schools. Last year, we reported that the EPA had rescinded safety rules at chemical plants, rubber-stamped untested new chemicals and silenced researchers.
As Trump's first term nears its end, things are even worse. Here are 10 more ways the Trump administration has continued to make life more toxic for Americans.
1. Failed to aggressively regulate toxic 'forever chemicals'
The toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS contaminate more than 2,200 sites across the nation. Because they never break down in the environment, PFAS are often called "forever chemicals." They build up in our bodies and are linked to cancer, reproductive and developmental harms and reduced effectiveness of vaccines. Even though the EPA has known about the risks from PFAS chemicals since at least 1998, they remain virtually unregulated.
In February 2019, the EPA released a toothless PFAS "action plan" that lacked deadlines for action and failed to address the use of PFAS in everyday products, contamination from PFAS air emissions or disposal of PFAS waste, among other concerns. A year and a half later, key goals from the plan, including regulating PFAS under the Superfund law and setting drinking water standards, remain unfulfilled.
When Congress stepped in and sought to designate PFOA and PFOS--the two most notorious and well-studied PFAS--as "hazardous substances" and to set deadlines for agency action, Trump threatened a veto. Trump's EPA also weakened a rule designed to regulate PFAS in consumer products.
2. Allowed a rocket fuel chemical to stay in drinking water
Perchlorate is a component of rocket fuel that also frequently contaminates drinking water sources. Perchlorate can interfere with thyroid function, which can also harm childhood brain development.
Almost a decade ago, the EPA determined that these harms warranted regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The agency then dragged its feet for years. In 2016, the Natural Resources Defense Council sued to force the EPA to finally set a legal limit for perchlorate in drinking water. In a court-approved consent decree, the EPA agreed to propose a standard by October 2018 and finalize it by 2019. However, the EPA sought extensions and failed to meet these deadlines.
The EPA finally proposed a drinking water standard in June 2019 but also suggested that it might not regulate perchlorate after all. A year later, the EPA withdrew its decision to regulate perchlorate in drinking water.
3. Allowed scores of new chemicals, including new toxic PFAS, onto the market without adequate oversight
In 2016, Congress substantially changed the way new chemicals are approved under the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA.
Under the old law, chemicals were frequently approved by default, often without any health and safety information. As a result, unsafe chemicals were allowed to be used for years or decades before the health and environmental hazards came to light. Inadequate oversight of new chemicals can also lead to regrettable substitution - when chemicals are finally found to be unsafe, they are often replaced by unstudied chemicals that may be just as or even more toxic.
The 2016 update was supposed to fix the new chemicals program by requiring the EPA to make an affirmative safety finding on new chemicals and restrict use if industry failed to provide sufficient safety data. Nonetheless, the Trump EPA has approved scores of new chemicals in a process that lacks transparency and contravenes the 2016 law. The EPA has also ignored known health concerns, limited its consideration of worker risks and denied requests for public files in the new chemicals program.
The EPA has also exploited loopholes in the new law to quickly approve new chemicals, including toxic PFAS. A recent investigation found that the EPA has been quietly approving new PFAS chemicals, through a provision known as the low volume exemption in the new chemicals program. As a result, the EPA is greenlighting new PFAS chemicals on an expedited basis, without public scrutiny. One PFAS, used in ski wax, was approved despite a finding that the chemical could "waterproof the lungs," resulting in severe health impacts.
Since the law was updated in 2016, the EPA has reviewed more than 3,000 new chemicals submissions. More than 1,000 of these chemicals have been approved through the low volume exemption, and since 2016, manufacturers have begun producing at least 900 new chemicals, many without adequate safety data. Environmental groups have sued the EPA over its failures to protect the public and the environment from risks from new chemicals.
4. Failed to protect workers from a deadly paint-stripping chemical
Methylene chloride is a highly toxic chemical used in paint strippers that is responsible for more than 60 deaths since 1980. In the final days of the Obama administration, the EPA proposed a ban on "methylene chloride for consumer and most types of commercial paint and coating removal."
After significant pressure from families who lost loved ones due to methylene chloride exposure, the Trump EPA eventually issued a final rule in 2019. However, the EPA narrowed the rule so that it would apply only to consumer uses of methylene chloride, not commercial uses. That means workers are not protected, even though a Center for Public Integrity investigation found that most deaths from methylene chloride take place at work.
A separate EPA evaluation of methylene chloride found that manufacturing, disposal and several other uses of methylene chloride pose no "unreasonable risk." Environmental groups have filed lawsuits challenging the rule and the recent evaluation.
5. Cooked the books on the "Civil Action" chemical
Trichloroethylene is a chemical solvent made infamous by the book and movie "A Civil Action." The EPA considers it to be a known carcinogen, and it is one of the primary contaminants that sickened scores of veterans who served at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina.
As with methylene chloride, in the final days of the Obama administration, the EPA proposed banning three uses of TCE: spot cleaning, aerosol degreasing and vapor degreasing. In December 2017, the Trump EPA shelved these proposed bans, claiming that it would study those uses in a separate ongoing risk evaluation of TCE.
However, the EPA dramatically rewrote the accepted science on TCE in the draft risk evaluation released in February. As EWG warned in 2018, the solvents industry aggressively lobbied the EPA to ignore a key 2003 study finding that TCE causes heart deformities in developing fetuses. TCE's connection with fetal heart defects was an important basis for the Obama EPA's decision to ban three uses of TCE. An independent review of the EPA's science found that "prenatal exposure to TCE can cause human cardiac defects" and that the study "remains a valid choice" for assessing risk.
The lobbyists succeeded. The EPA's draft risk evaluation questioned the study's design and minimized its significance. An investigation by Reveal News compared the draft risk evaluation with a leaked earlier draft. It found that the earlier draft had relied extensively on the 2003 study and used it as a benchmark for the risk calculations. Reveal also reported that then-EPA chemicals safety chief Nancy Beck--"the scariest Trump appointee you've never heard of"--ordered that the risk evaluation be rewritten to downplay the risks of TCE. With the EPA giving significantly less weight to risks from fetal heart deformities, it's unlikely the agency will finalize the proposed bans.
6. Pressured EPA scientists to drop evaluations of toxic chemicals--including formaldehyde
The Trump EPA is undermining the work of independent scientists within the Integrated Risk Information System program, known as IRIS. The program's work is supposed to be impartial and non-political. Its scientific assessments are intended to support the work of other EPA program offices and regional offices. IRIS is a frequent target of chemical industry attacks because its independent safety assessments often don't align with industry objectives.
In 2018, the Trump EPA tried to defund the IRIS program. EPA leadership also pressured IRIS to drop critical health assessments. In March 2019, a Government Accountability Office report disclosed that EPA leadership directed agency offices to limit the number of chemicals they wanted IRIS to review, and cut in half the number of IRIS's ongoing or upcoming assessments.
One of the halted assessments was IRIS's decades-long review of formaldehyde, a widely used chemical and known human carcinogen. This is surprising because former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt indicated to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in January 2018 that the report was complete and ready for release. However, answering questions for the record following a 2019 Senate hearing, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said formaldehyde was "not a top priority."
Instead of releasing the IRIS study on formaldehyde to the public, the EPA has instead decided that the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention--under the leadership of Nancy Beck--should conduct its own assessment of formaldehyde. As with TCE, this action will give the agency an opportunity to distort the science and minimize risks. Because these reviews take years, it will also significantly delay any EPA regulatory action on formaldehyde.
7. Rolled back clean water protections
Industrial chemical pollutants are often discharged into drinking water supplies. But the Trump administration has made it a priority to roll back the Clean Water Rule, which more clearly defined which kinds of bodies of water are subject to the Clean Water Act. EWG's analysis found that the Clean Water Rule, if implemented as proposed by the Obama administration, would have protected drinking water sources for more than 117 million Americans.
The EPA's own science advisors have opposed the rollback of the Clean Water Rule, but the Trump administration repealed it in 2019, proposed its own rule in January and finalized it in April. The new rule covers far fewer bodies of water and would leave 234,000 miles of small streams unprotected. EWG estimates that at least 72 million Americans draw at least half their drinking water from small streams.
Because of the repeal, those bodies of water will no longer be subject to pollution limits. Protection for small and seasonal streams and wetlands is important because they often flow into larger bodies of water, including sources of drinking water. Polluted drinking water sources strain municipal water utilities tasked with filtering out contaminants regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and risk exposing the public to more contaminants that aren't regulated under the act.
8. Cooked the books on asbestos
Asbestos is a highly toxic, naturally occurring chemical linked to a particularly deadly form of cancer called mesothelioma. An estimated 40,000 Americans die every year from asbestos-related diseases. Although the toxicity of asbestos is well understood, the EPA has never actually banned most uses. The EPA attempted a ban in 1989, but most of the rule was overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1991.
After Congress reformed TSCA in 2016, the EPA announced that asbestos would be one of the first 10 chemicals reviewed under the new law. Many hoped that this time, the EPA would finally ban asbestos.
Instead, when the EPA released its draft risk evaluation in May, it found that several uses of asbestos, including import of asbestos and asbestos-containing products and distribution of asbestos-containing products, did not pose an unreasonable risk. The EPA made its risk determinations by ignoring exposure from "legacy" uses of asbestos, such as old insulation and building tiles. Although in November the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the EPA to fix this error, it has yet to do so.
Instead of banning asbestos, in April 2019 the EPA published a rule requiring notice and approval before manufacturers could resume using it in some applications the agency considered abandoned. However, leaked documents show that more than a dozen EPA staffers urged an outright ban on asbestos instead.
9. Proposed a loophole for toxic air pollution
In July 2019, the Trump EPA proposed to reverse a longstanding policy requiring large power plants, refineries and other industrial polluters to always meet certain strict controls, even after reducing emissions. The new rule creates a loophole in the Clean Air Act regulations that would allow large industrial facilities to reclassify themselves, from "major sources" of air pollution to "area sources."
That change would allow them to opt out of strict pollution control standards, called "maximum achievable control technology," and substantially increase their emissions of dangerous air pollutants. EPA's own data shows that more than 3,900 large facilities that emit pollutants like mercury and benzene could take advantage of this loophole. The Environmental Defense Fund estimates the loophole could increase toxic air emissions by as much as 480 percent, or almost 50 million pounds per year.
This rollback is especially alarming in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic. Studies have found that people who live in areas with high levels of air pollution are at greater risk for severe cases of COVID-19.
10. Continuing its quest to censor science
In 2018, the EPA proposed a disastrous rule significantly limiting the kinds of science the agency can rely on to justify environmental regulations. The rule would have prohibited the agency from using studies that don't make their underlying data publicly available or whose results can't be replicated. That change would prevent the EPA from including in its future risk assessments most human health studies, because personal medical data must remain confidential. The rule would undermine studies that are foundational to clean air regulations.
The proposal sparked enormous opposition from scientists, academics and environmental health advocates. More than 600,000 public comments were submitted to the agency, the vast majority in opposition. In September 2019, the EPA dropped the proposal from its regulatory agenda.
But the Trump EPA is at it again. In March, the agency issued a supplemental proposal that is actually worse than the original proposal. The 2018 proposal applied to all "dose response" studies, but the new proposal applies to all studies. The new proposal also applies retroactively, which means the EPA could use it to gut existing regulations.
As these actions--and dozens of others--show, the Trump EPA has aggressively worked to erode and eliminate vital environmental and public health protections. The public needs an EPA that will prioritize people and planet over polluters and profit.
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Processed Meats Pose Severe Cancer Risk, Says WHO
Bacon, sausage, ham labeled "carcinogenic to humans" by World Health Organization's cancer research arm
Oct 26, 2015
Processed meats have been placed in the same health risk category as smoking and asbestos by the cancer research body of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday.
Products salted, cured, or otherwise processed to enhance flavor are "carcinogenic to humans," the Paris-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) found in its report, published in the Lancet Oncology. That puts processed meat in the Group 1 carcinogenic category alongside substances like tobacco, alcohol, and plutonium. And non-processed fresh meats like beef, pork, and lamb, among others, are "probably carcinogenic to humans," the agency said.
According to the IARC's report, Carcinogenicity of Consumption of Red and Processed Meat, each 50-gram portion of processed meat eaten daily—including bacon, sausages, and ham, as well as canned meat and meat-based sauces—increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent. The report was crafted by 22 international health experts for the IARC Monograph Program, which evaluates environmental causes of cancer in humans.
"For an individual, the risk of developing colorectal cancer because they consume processed meat remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat consumed," said Dr. Kurt Straif, head of the IARC Monograph Program. "In view of the large number of people who consume processed meat, the global impact on cancer incidence is of public health importance."
The IARC's findings (pdf) come just months after the top U.S. nutritional panel, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, reported that Americans must reduce their meat intake and switch to sustainable, plant-based diets to curb greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the rise of preventable chronic diseases like diabetes and certain types of cancer.
President Obama responded to that report in February by vowing to consider the environment in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), due later this year. However, heavy lobbying by the meat industry in the intervening months led the Obama administration to rescind its promise, a move that climate and public health advocates called "disappointing" and "politically motivated."
The IARC stated on Monday that meat consumption is increasing in low—and middle-income countries (pdf). Citing the Global Burden of Disease Project, an independent research organization, the IARC reported that diets with a heavy intake of processed meat can cause about 34,000 deaths per year.
"These findings further support current public health recommendations," said IARC director Dr. Christopher Wild. He added that global governments and regulatory agencies should also use them to provide the best dietary guidelines.
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Keeping Coal Out of Oakland
Oct 13, 2015
Oakland, California, long overshadowed by its neighbor across the Bay, San Francisco, has recently emerged as a magnet for young technology companies and progressive green businesses. A private developer's backroom deal with Utah coal-producing counties may sign the city on to house the West Coast's largest coal export terminal, throwing Oakland back into the dark ages by shipping an outdated and dying commodity. Earthjustice represents Communities for a Better Environment, the Sierra Club, San Francisco Baykeeper, and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network in fighting the development of this coal export terminal.
The terminal would be developed on land next to Oakland's San Francisco Bay Bridge. Formerly owned by the U.S. Army and operated as a military base, the land was turned over to a local redevelopment agency in 1999 and Oakland in 2006. In 2012, the city contracted with the private developer, Prologis CCIG Oakland Global, LLC, to handle the development of parts of the base. Plans for redeveloping the base envisioned enhancing the existing transportation infrastructure, including an existing marine terminal, developing additional space for warehousing and distribution services, office and other commercial spaces, and affordable housing.
Coal never emerged in any redevelopment documents or discussions with the community. For years, the city and residents believed and were reassured by the developer that the development of the Oakland terminal would involve handling goods such as corn, iron ore, and wind turbines--not coal.
In April 2015, community groups in Oakland were shocked to learn that the Army base developer had cut a $53 million backroom deal with four coal-producing Utah counties, which grants the consortium the right to use half of the bulk terminal's nine to ten-million-ton holding capacity for exporting Utah coal.
However, the environmental review for the development project has never considered the effects of a coal terminal on the Oakland waterfront. If the plan succeeds, as many as a dozen 100-car coal trains would cross through the city weekly.
Transporting and storing coal on the Oakland waterfront poses serious short—and long-term impacts on community health and the local environment. Coal transportation and storage are dirty and dangerous businesses. Coal is transported in open-top, mile-long train cars that release hundreds of tons of coal dust as they travel. Coal dust is linked to high blood pressure, pulmonary and kidney disease, low birth weight, and certain types of cancer.
The base sits at the edge of the neighborhood of West Oakland, which is already rife with toxic contamination from industry, both past and present. The community of West Oakland is hemmed in by railyards, highways, and marine shipping operations, which exposes the residents to large quantities of freight-generated air pollution, and they suffer from high asthma rates. The EPA designated a federal Superfund site here in 2003 at a lot where AMCO Chemical left a deposit of carcinogenic vinyl chloride in the soil and groundwater. Opening a coal terminal will only add to the existing environmental problems in the nearby community.
Once at the port, coal is frequently stored in uncovered piles, which further places the community and environment at risk from coal dust pollution. Because there has been no environmental review for coal exports at the port, there are currently no enforceable mitigation measures to protect the community or the environment from these harmful effects. Due to declining domestic demand for coal, much of the coal coming through Oakland is destined for overseas markets. Additional harm stems from exporting coal overseas. The carbon dioxide produced by burning coal contributes to global climate change, and pollutants from coal combustion in Asia drift eastward over the Pacific, worsening West Coast air quality.
A coal export terminal was never part of the original plans for the former Army base, and the developer's secretive deal with the Utah consortium is stirring up a heated debate in the city. In late September, 694 public members signed up to speak at a city council hearing on coal. Richard Grassetti, a California Environmental Quality Act expert, attended the meeting. He highlighted that this deal would significantly change the nature of the project, and a new environmental impact study needs to be conducted.
Danny Kennedy, one of the founders of Sungevity, also spoke, compelling the council to see coal as a dead-end investment. He said, "This is asbestos, this is tobacco. Oakland doesn't need this albatross around its neck."
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