In the News

January 18, 2022

It’s Time to Stop Rolling the Dice on Chemical Disasters

Have you ever watched somebody shake a can of soda, and then get ready to crack open the top? You know it’s going to explode, but you don’t know when, or how bad it will be. That’s what it’s like living near a chemical plant. Except the consequences can be deadly. As a lifelong resident of Kanawha County, West Virginia — an area that has been home to dozens of industrial facilities making everything from pesticides to plastics — I know this uncertain feeling all too well. For the past several decades, I’ve listened to emergency sirens go off in my community, indicating that we need to shelter in place, while virtually no information is shared about what happened or how dangerous it might be. The Environmental Protection Agency can help protect millions of people who live near industrial facilities — but only if it works now to strengthen an important federal chemical policy. Read More

January 13, 2022

Environmental Justice Advocates Raise Alarm After White House Exits

The Biden administration's commitment to the advancement of environmental justice is the target of fresh doubt Thursday following departures in recent days of two key officials focused on the issue. The administration's top environmental justice official, Cecilia Martinez—who served as senior director for environmental justice at the Council for Environmental Quality—announced her resignation last week. As such, the need to work to defend those "on the fencelines of environmental injustices" is as clear as ever, said the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) and Coming Clean, two groups focused on racial justice and health issues. Read More

December 14, 2021

Texas Border Town Demands Stronger Action to Tackle Cancer-Causing Chemical Pollution

In many ways, EtO is a poster child for the ways that industry and regulators have, for decades, failed to effectively protect people from chemical safety hazards and health threats like cancer. A report published last week highlighted the role that chemical plants play in driving climate change. The report, “The Chemical Industry: An Overlooked Driver of the Climate Crisis,” was published by Coming Clean, a national environmental health and justice network, and concluded that roughly 7 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the chemical sector — and that percentage is predicted to grow as the energy transition pushes other sectors away from fossil fuels and towards lower-cost and less polluting renewable energy sources. Read More

December 8, 2021

Plastics, fertilizer, and synthetic rubber: Report calls out chemical industry’s use of fossil fuels

Everyone knows that the fossil fuel industry drives global warming. A new report shows that the chemical industry contributes to the climate crisis, too. But the conversation about solutions to climate change has largely omitted the role that chemicals and petrochemicals play in exacerbating the crisis, and the report says policymakers should start thinking about ways to green the industry. 

The chemical sector doesn’t just make products like inks, solvents, glues, and soaps. It also makes products out of oil and gas like plastics, fertilizer, and synthetic rubber. The chemical industry often relies on fossil fuels to power its factories and make its products. And some of these chemicals, like refrigerants, are potent greenhouse gases themselves. All of those emissions add up.  Read More

December 8, 2021

'Louisville Charter' pushes for US chemicals industry overhaul

More than 100 NGOs and firms in the US and beyond have signed onto a blueprint for transforming the national chemicals sector, calling for "fundamental and comprehensive reform" to safeguard ecological and human wellbeing. The Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals highlights a need to cease manufacturing persistent or bioaccumulative substances, mandate non-toxic alternatives, restrict potentially concerning substance classes via science-centred strategies and ensure civic participation in chemicals-related decisions.  Published on 7 December by the Coming Clean network, the roadmap is backed by environmental justice parties, eco- and public health organisations and health, business and research experts.  Read More

December 7, 2021

Cut greenhouse gas emissions, advocates tell chemical industry

November 24, 2021

The EPA Administrator Visited Cancer-Causing Air Pollution Hot Spots Highlighted by ProPublica and Promised Reforms

Veteran environmental activist Christine Bennett, who grew up in Mossville, lost eight of her family members to illnesses that she attributes to “living in a chemical cocktail.” She’s traveled across the United States to speak about pollution. During her meeting with Regan, she asked him for the same things she’d already asked of so many government officials: a health clinic, a memorial, restitution from industry for the lost value of Mossville’s homes and funding for relocation. Her husband, Delma Bennett, said that Regan told them he was “taking this to heart and hearing everything we are saying.” “But we’ve met with so many of them over the years,” Christine Bennett replied. “All we do is be heard.” Read More

November 17, 2021

Louisville Chemours plant plans to curb super pollutants

Earlier this year, Inside Climate News reported the Chemours Louisville Works plant emits more greenhouse gases than all of the cars and light-duty trucks registered in the city combined... New equipment will help the chemical plant reduce its greenhouse gas emissions... But the new equipment will create its own emissions, releasing more than 1,600 pounds of chloroform and other hazardous air pollutants into fence-line communities, records show. The communities that live near the industrial corridor known as Rubbertown already deal with a disproportionate amount of the city’s pollution. Nearly 2,400 people live within a mile of the plant, 62% are people of color and nearly half are low-income, according to an EPA database. “You can’t trade off one bad thing, greenhouse gases, for another bad thing, hazardous chemicals,” said Eboni Cochran, co-director of Rubbertown Emergency Action (REACT), Read More

November 3, 2021

The first People of Color Environmental Summit was 30 years ago. How much has changed?

At the panel discussion marking the 30th anniversary of the First National People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summit, Moore recalled being moved at the time because he was surrounded by people of color and all of them were working to address environmental issues in their communities just like he was in Albuquerque’s South Valley.

[Charlotte Observer]  Read More

October 18, 2021

Biden administration moves to curtail toxic ‘forever chemicals’

The Biden administration moved Monday to regulate a group of long-lasting, human-made chemicals that pose health risks to millions of Americans, even as they continue to be used in an array of products such as cosmetics, dental floss, food packaging, clothing and cleaning supplies. But Monday’s actions addressed only some of the recommendations submitted by a national environmental justice group in 2019.

[Washington Post]  Read More

October 14, 2021

As masses of plaintiffs pursue Roundup cancer compensation, migrant farmworkers are left out

In 2018, a California school groundskeeper took Monsanto Company to court, alleging that Roundup, one of America's most popular weed killers, caused his Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer. The jury agreed and ordered Monsanto to pay the man $289 million in damages, concluding the world's first Roundup cancer trial. Since then, more than 100,000 plaintiffs exposed to Roundup have sought retributions in the courts. While Bayer... has agreed to pay billions of dollars to put these cancer lawsuits to rest, legal experts say migrant farmworkers, who are at the forefront of pesticide and herbicide exposures—including Roundup—are expected to be left out.

[Environmental Health News] Read More

October 13, 2021

EPA Failed to Correct Industry Misinformation About Deadly Air Pollution at Public Meetings

At several recent information sessions on the risks posed by the carcinogenic air pollutant ethylene oxide, the Environmental Protection Agency invited local polluters to participate and failed to correct the companies’ false assertions that the chemical poses no danger. “The rich community can shut theirs down because they got the mighty dollar,” Christine Bennett, a resident of Mossville, Louisiana, said at the community meeting, referring to the Illinois plant that was shut after emitting ethylene oxide. “But here in a low-income, poor community, we can’t do nothing about it.”

[The Intercept] Read More

October 4, 2021

Here’s how Congress could hold the EPA accountable for its ‘dereliction of duty’

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, the EPA announced a policy that relaxed federal environmental monitoring and reporting requirements for polluting industries across the country. Now, in an effort to address long-standing systemic environmental inequities as well as the implications of the 2020 EPA decision to relax enforcement of the country’s environmental protection laws, the House Committee on Natural Resources is leading an effort to hold congressional hearings that would publicly acknowledge and examine the effects of that decision. The ultimate goal is to promote legislative solutions that tackle the cumulative effects of environmental injustices that have been magnified in vulnerable communities during the public health crisis. 

[Grist] Read More

October 4, 2021

Latina Farmworkers Speak Out about the Hazards of Life in California’s Fields

Araceli Ruiz has been harvesting fruits and vegetables in California’s Salinas Valley, a region known as “the salad bowl of the world,” since she arrived in California from a small town in central Mexico at 19. While the 43-year-old mother of three is proud of her hard work, the job’s hazards have taken a toll. About six years ago, she decided to share her story with other farmworkers. After linking up with the Greenfield chapter of Líderes Campesinas, a network of about 500 women and girls spread among 14 local chapters in California’s biggest agricultural centers, she began warning the community about the dangers of pesticide exposure.

[NRDC Blog]  Read More

September 24, 2021

We need to protect communities hit 'first and worst' by climate change, state lawmakers say

Low-income and indigenous communities as well as communities of color are hit "first and worst" by climate change, whether it's destructive hurricanes, droughts, or extreme heat, policymaker panelists said during a Climate Week NYC event Thursday — and holistic environmental-justice solutions are needed.

[Business Insider]  Read More

September 1, 2021

Climate Change is Increasing Chemical Facility Hazards

A fertilizer plant battered by Hurricane Ida belched highly toxic anhydrous ammonia into the air. Two damaged gas pipelines leaked isobutane and propylene, flammable chemicals that are hazardous to human health. And a plastic plant that lost power in the storm’s aftermath is emitting ethylene dichloride, yet another toxic substance.

[New York Times] Read More

August 18, 2021

EPA to ban food use of pesticide linked to brain damage

Advocates for farmworker rights were particularly vocal about the decision’s implications. Jeannie Economos, a project coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida, praised EPA’s plan as "robust" and key to ensuring protections for workers and their families. “Farmworker children in rural areas are just as valuable as children anywhere in the world, and it is unconscionable that it has taken so long to provide equal protection to these beautiful, yet vulnerable children in our agricultural communities," Economos said. Read More

August 1, 2021

The Biden Administration’s Embrace of Environmental Justice Has Made Wary Activists Willing to Believe

Decades after emerging from the broader civil rights movement, setting itself apart from traditional environmentalism, flourishing in academia and wending through public discourse, the environmental justice movement has now achieved unprecedented prominence as activists work to entrench their gains within the federal government.

[Inside Climate News]  Read More

July 27, 2021

Front-line communities bet on Biden. Can his EJ plan deliver?

Environmental justice advocates have gotten used to hearing election-season promises, and so they didn’t get too excited last year when Joe Biden offered them this one: access and input to his political agenda.

The advocates said they were skeptical they could count on the longtime Democratic senator from Delaware, given his state’s poor reputation for environmental inequity. Read More

July 27, 2021

Martinelli’s among brands searching for safer bottle cap options

When the nonprofit Defend Our Health tested bottle caps from 141 beverage brands, they found potentially harmful chemicals in more than a third of them. Two Martinelli’s products were among these brands, but the Watsonville-based apple juice and cider company says it is now in the process of addressing the issue.

Defend Our Health worked with the Campaign for Healthier Solutions to collect and test 273 glass bottle caps for phthalates and vinyl plastics. Read More