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2022 Coming Clean EJHA group

Coming Clean is a nonprofit environmental health collaborative working to transform the chemical industry so it is no longer a source of harm, and to secure systemic changes that allow a safe chemical and clean energy economy to flourish. Our members are organizations and technical experts — including grassroots activists, community leaders, scientists, health professionals, business leaders, lawyers, and farmworker advocates — committed to principled collaboration to advance a nontoxic, sustainable, and just world for all. Learn more.

Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) have worked in strategic partnerships for over 20 years. EJHA is a network of grassrots organizers from communities that are disproportionately impacted by toxic chemicals from legacy contaminations, ongoing exposure to polluting facilities, and health-harming chemicals in household products. Visit their website to learn more.

Safe Fields & Food

Safe Fields & Food

Protecting farmworkers from harmful chemicals and supporting sustainable local food systems.

Safe Products & Stores

Safe Products & Stores

Defending customers and our families from toxic chemicals in products.

Safe Chemicals & Facilities

Safe Chemicals & Facilities

Protecting fenceline communities and facility workers from chemical disasters and toxic chemical exposure.

Life at the Fenceline

Life at the Fenceline

Watch the video: Roughly 40% of the population live within 3 miles of chemical facilities that could leak, spill, or explode.

The Story of Coming Clean

The Story of Coming Clean

Learn more about the collaborative approach that informs our organizing.

The Louisville Charter

The Louisville Charter

The Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals is our shared platform for transforming the chemical industry, endorsed by 125+ organizations.

Preventing Chemical Disasters

Preventing Chemical Disasters

Watch the video: We're calling on the EPA to strengthen the rules for hazardous facilities.

March 15, 2023

Why environmental justice is a critical component of safe and sustainable chemistry

Bev Thorpe reflects on her participation in a roundtable event Sustainable Chemistry in RD&D to Transform the Chemicals Industry, co-hosted by the Dept of Energy/Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office and the Green Chemistry & Commerce Council. "Sustainable Chemistry – if rolled out well – will provide solutions for both the climate and chemical pollution crises and local communities will be integral to this success.   But this will only happen if decarbonization and detoxification go hand in hand."

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March 13, 2023

East Palestine Toxic Train Crash Shows Plastics Industry Toll on Planet. Will U.S. Ban Vinyl Chloride?

Five weeks after the Norfolk Southern train disaster in the small town of East Palestine, Ohio, the company’s CEO Alan Shaw was grilled on Capitol Hill Thursday about the February 3rd derailment and so-called controlled burn that blanketed the town with a toxic brew of at least six hazardous chemicals and gases, including vinyl chloride, which, when heated, becomes phosgene, the World War I chemical weapon. The company has evaded calls to cover healthcare costs as residents continue to report headaches, coughing, fatigue, irritation and burning of the skin. For more on the ongoing fallout from the toxic crash, and its roots in the plastics industry, we are joined by Monica Unseld, a biologist and environmental and social justice advocate who has studied the health impact of endocrine-disrupting chemicals used in plastics like those released in East Palestine.

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March 1, 2023

Disasters strike most vinyl chloride producers, show need for substitution

Since 2010, there have been at least 40 chemical incidents worldwide involving vinyl chloride and PVC.  These have occurred at 29 facilities worldwide, including a dozen chemical factories in the U.S.  Fires, leaks, and explosions killed at least 71 people and injured 637 people. Many more people, animals, and plants have been harmed over the long-term. Material Research today published a chronology and map of these incidents in collaboration with Coming Clean, in support of the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters.

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February 26, 2023

Can you tell if a ‘bomb train’ is coming to your town? It’s complicated.

In the wake of the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, Governor Mike DeWine called on Congress to look into why the rural village didn’t know ahead of time they had volatile chemicals coming through town. “We should know when we have trains carrying hazardous materials through the state of Ohio,” DeWine said at a press conference. This information is out there, but it’s probably not what the governor had in mind. With the derailment of the Norfolk Southern train receiving international attention, more railroad communities are now asking what is traveling through their backyard. Stephanie Herron, a national organizer with the collective Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform said in a statement that neighboring communities refuse to accept these events as a fact of life. “These issues aren’t new to the people who live near hazardous facilities who have been speaking up about the urgent need to transition to safer chemicals to prevent disasters in their communities,“ Herron said. “What’s new is that more people are paying attention.”

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February 25, 2023

Revealed: the US is averaging one chemical accident every two days

Mike DeWine, the Ohio governor, recently lamented the toll taken on the residents of East Palestine after the toxic train derailment there, saying “no other community should have to go through this”. But such accidents are happening with striking regularity. A Guardian analysis of data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by non-profit groups that track chemical accidents in the US shows that accidental releases – be they through train derailments, truck crashes, pipeline ruptures or industrial plant leaks and spills – are happening consistently across the country. By one estimate these incidents are occurring, on average, every two days. For Eboni Cochran, a mother and volunteer community activist, the East Palestine disaster has hardly added to her faith in the federal government. Cochran lives with her husband and 16-year-old son roughly 400 miles south of the derailment, near a Louisville, Kentucky, industrial zone along the Ohio River that locals call “Rubbertown.” The area is home to a cluster of chemical manufacturing facilities, and curious odors and concerns about toxic exposures permeate the neighborhoods near the plants.

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Coming Clean is a nonprofit collaborative of environmental health and environmental justice experts working to reform the chemical and energy industries so they are no longer a source of harm. We coordinate hundreds of organizations and issue experts—including grassroots activists, community leaders, scientists and researchers, business leaders, lawyers, and advocates working to reform the chemical and energy industries. We envision a future where no one’s health is sacrificed by toxic chemical use or energy generation. Guided by the Louisville Charter, Jemez Principles of Democratic Organizing, and the Principles of Environmental Justice, we are winning campaigns for a healthy, just, and sustainable society by growing a stronger and more connected movement.