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environmental working group
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 Timesreports:
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 Dreamsreported.
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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'Public Health Emergency': Report Calls for Multi-Agency Action to Address PFAS Crisis
"We're at a tipping point, where the next administration must act decisively to avert a public health catastrophe that could define the next decade."
Aug 15, 2024
Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy nonprofit, released a roadmap on Thursday calling for a comprehensive government program to address the PFAS contamination crisis facing the United States.
The EWG roadmap details the agency-by-agency response the group says is needed to deal with the environmental and public health threat posed by the nearly ubiquitous presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are linked to many cancers and other serious health conditions.
EWG's plan involves not just steps that should be taken by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) but also the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the departments of Agriculture, Defense, and Health and Human Services, and several other federal agencies.
Scott Faber, EWG's vice president of government affairs, said in a statement that PFAS contamination was "an unfolding disaster that demands immediate and unprecedented action."
"We're at a tipping point, where the next administration must act decisively to avert a public health catastrophe that could define the next decade," he said.
The contamination crisis from the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS is far from over, despite the Biden-Harris administration’s strides combating PFAS pollution. EWG has identified steps the next administration should take to build on successes so far. https://t.co/BQUUNnUTdI
— EWG (@ewg) August 15, 2024
EWG commended the Biden administration for the steps that it's taken to deal with the PFAS contamination crisis. The White House put forth an eight-agency PFAS plan in October 2021 and has implemented key parts, most notably by setting strict national limits on PFAS in drinking water. That rule, finalized in April, faces legal challenges from industry groups.
PFAS are set of roughly 16,000 synthetic compounds that were developed by chemical companies for use in a wide range of products. They can enter the human body—where, as "forever chemicals," they accumulate in bones and organs—through drinking water, food, the skin, or the air. Most Americans have PFAS in their blood.
Reporting by Sharon Lerner, a ProPublica journalist who previously worked at The Intercept, has indicated that 3M and DuPont, two of the major PFAS producers, knew about the dangers and widespread distribution of PFAS but hid them from the public.
In April, the EPA designated two of the most common PFAS, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), as hazardous substances under the Superfund law—another move that EWG celebrated.
"But there's much more that must be done," according to the new roadmap, authored by John Reeder, EWG's vice president of federal affairs.
In the roadmap, Reeder, a former EPA deputy chief of staff, called for the agency to double its budget for PFAS—i.e., increase its funding request to Congress—and crack down on industrial discharges, among many other proposals. He also called on the FDA to ban the use of PFAS in food packaging and establish limits on their use in foods. For the Department of Defense, Reeder's plan includes giving defense communities safe water to drink—at least 100 military sites are known to have contaminated water—and end the use of PFAS in firefighting foam.
Such federal action will likely depend on the results of the presidential and congressional elections. Project 2025, a right-wing policy blueprint for a Republican administration, proposes deregulation of PFAS and funding cuts for key EPA functions. Experts inside and outside the agency toldThe Guardian late last month that a victory by Republican nominee Donald Trump would mean PFAS rules would become subject to a great deal of industry influence.
Meanwhile, the scale of the PFAS problem continues to become more clear. Data recently updated by the EPA shows that 7,457 U.S. drinking water locations have PFAS in their supply, putting much of the American population at risk, according to EWG. The EPA has found that there's "no safe level of exposure" to PFOA and PFOS.
"The sheer number of contaminated sites is a red flag that says we are facing a pervasive and devastating crisis," said Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist at EWG. "More than 130 million Americans are drinking water tainted with PFAS, putting them at risk of severe health issues. This is no longer just an environmental concern; it's a major public health emergency."
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GOP Farm Bill Blueprint 'Puts Big Ag's Profits Over Everyone Else'
"America's farmers and consumers need forward-looking policies that build a sustainable, resilient, and fair food system," said one campaigner.
May 01, 2024
As Democratic and Republican leaders on Wednesday unveiled competing visions for the next Farm Bill, green groups sounded the alarm about the GOP proposal that "slashes nutrition programs and climate-focused conservation funding in order to boost commodity crop production."
U.S. House Committee on Agriculture Chair Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.) put out a "title-by-title overview" of priorities and announced plans for a legislative markup on May 23 while Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) released the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act, which includes over 100 bipartisan bills.
"The contrast between the House and Senate farm bill proposals could not be clearer," asserted Environmental Working Group senior vice president for government affairs Scott Faber. "The Senate framework would ensure that farmers are rewarded when they take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the House framework would not."
"At a time when farmer demand for climate-smart funding is growing, Congress should ensure that support for farmers offering to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer, and methane emissions from animals and their waste, is the Department of Agriculture's top priority," Faber said. "Unless farmers are provided the tools to reduce nitrous oxide and methane emissions from agriculture, farming will soon be the nation's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions."
Friends of the Earth senior program manager Chloe Waterman declared that "House Republicans have proposed a dead-on-arrival Farm Bill framework that puts Big Ag's profits over everyone else: communities, family farmers, consumers, states and local rule, farmed animals, and the planet."
"Senate Democrats are off to a much better start than the House, but they have also fallen short by failing to shift subsidies and other support away from factory farming and pesticide-intensive commodities toward diversified, regenerative, and climate-friendly farming systems," she added. "We are particularly concerned that millions of dollars intended for climate mitigation will continue to be funneled to factory farms, including to support greenwashed factory farm gas."
Both Waterman's organization and Food and Water Watch spotlighted the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act, which aims to prevent state and local policies designed to protect animal welfare, farm workers, and food safety—like California's Proposition 12, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last year. The Republican bill is opposed by more than 200 members of Congress and over 150 advocacy groups.
"Despicable ploys to undermine critical consumer and animal welfare protections must be dead on arrival," Food & Water Watch senior food policy analyst Rebecca Wolf said in a Wednesday statement blasting the House GOP's priorities.
"America's farmers and consumers need forward-looking policies that build a sustainable, resilient, and fair food system," she stressed. "Instead, House leadership seems poised to take us backwards, trading state-level gains for a few more bucks in the pockets of corporate donors. Congress must move beyond partisan bickering, and get to work on a Farm Bill that cuts handouts to Big Ag and factory farms."
As green groups slammed the GOP's agricultural proposals for the Farm Bill, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) called out the Republican scheme to attack food stamps.
Stabenow's bill "would protect and strengthen the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), our nation's most important and effective anti-hunger program," noted Ty Jones Cox, CBPP's vice president for food assistance.
Meanwhile, Thompson's plan "would put a healthy diet out of reach in the future for millions of families with low incomes by cutting future benefits for all SNAP participants and eroding the adequacy of SNAP benefits over time," she warned.
As Jones Cox detailed:
Thompson's proposal would prevent SNAP benefits from keeping pace with the cost of a healthy, realistic diet over time, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would result in a roughly $30 billion cut to SNAP over the next decade. The proposal would do this by freezing the cost of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Thrifty Food Plan (the basis for SNAP benefit levels) outside of inflation adjustments, even if nutrition guidelines or other factors change the cost of an adequate diet. The Thompson proposal's modest benefit improvements do not outweigh the harm to the tens of millions of SNAP participants—including children, older adults, and people with disabilities—who would receive less food assistance in the future because of this policy.
"Stabenow's proposal rejects the false premise that improvements in SNAP must come at the expense of food assistance for low-income families who count on SNAP to put food on the table," she concluded. "The Senate framework, which rejects harmful benefit cuts, should be the basis for farm bill negotiations moving forward."
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