Latest News
Deidre Nelms
Manager of Communications & Media
(802) 251-0203 ext. 711
dnelms@comingcleaninc.org
Coming Clean coordinates a broad range of projects and campaigns for market reform, safe chemical policy, clean energy solutions, and environmental justice. Please contact us with media inquiries or to request interviews with spokespeople on these issues or any of the following projects:
November 9, 2023
Over 825 hazardous chemical incidents – including fires, explosions and harmful chemical releases – have occurred since the beginning of 2021, and over 270 incidents have occurred this year alone, according to data published today by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters. Data included in the coalition’s online Chemical Incident Tracker is sourced from news reports. “Preventable chemical incidents are happening far too often across the country,” said Maya Nye, Federal Policy Director of Coming Clean, a member of the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters. “Communities shouldn’t have to leave their homes, shelter in place, or worry for the safety of their air and water because chemical plants can’t contain their toxic chemicals. Hazardous facilities must be required to do more to protect workers and communities.”
Read MoreSeptember 26, 2023
Allied members of the Campaign for Healthier Solutions, including farmworkers, environmental justice advocates, parents, and dollar store shoppers demonstrated outside 99 Cents Only Stores Headquarters and local stores across the state, urging the company to phase out chemicals of concern from its products. A delegation representing the campaign also delivered a letter requesting a meeting with 99 Cents Only Stores’ interim Chief Operations Officer Michael Simoncic and Director of Compliance Edgar Flores, to begin the work of drafting a corporate chemical management policy.
Read MoreJune 30, 2023
With warmth and deep appreciation, we thank Richard Moore for his twelve years as National Co-Coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA). Richard will be stepping down from this role today, while continuing to serve as Co-Coordinator of Los Jardines Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an affiliate member of EJHA. During his time as National Co-Coordinator, Richard helped secure historic commitments from the White House and federal agencies to advance environmental justice, the result of decades of dedicated bottom-up organizing rooted in solidarity and respect.
Read MoreMay 31, 2023
Dollar General shareholders urged the discount retailer to better protect the health of workers and shoppers today at its annual shareholder meeting in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. Shareholder advocates with the Campaign for Healthier Solutions (CHS) called on Dollar General to phase out chemicals of concern from its products and receipts, and voted yes on a shareholder proposal requesting an independent worker safety and well-being audit. New testing conducted by the Ecology Center Health Stuff Lab has found hormone-disrupting bisphenol S (BPS) in receipts that were printed in select stores of the major discount retailers in 2022, including Dollar General.
Read MoreApril 21, 2023
Today, President Biden signed the executive order Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All, directly incorporating many recommendations of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. The executive order makes clear that the pursuit of environmental justice is a duty of all executive branch agencies and should be incorporated into their missions, directs agencies to consider the cumulative health impacts of pollution on communities, and directs agencies to strengthen their direct engagement with impacted communities. The White House also published an Environmental Justice Scorecard and announced new Justice40 covered programs.
Read MoreApril 6, 2023
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule to significantly reduce emissions of toxic and other harmful air pollution from chemical plants, intended to reduce air toxics-related cancer risks in fenceline communities. Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) applauded the EPA for committing to take action to dramatically reduce emissions of cancer-causing chemicals from chemical and polymer plants. Under the proposed rule, these facilities will be required to conduct fenceline air monitoring to ensure compliance with new regulations, a priority for fenceline communities who have testified and submitted comments to the EPA in recent years.
Read MoreMarch 23, 2023
Today, Coming Clean hosted a lobby day for members to meet with Congressional leaders to urge them to prioritize community food sovereignty and farmworker protections in the upcoming farm bill reauthorization, while incentivizing reductions in pesticide use. Members from across the country, including small farmers and farmworkers, scheduled visits throughout the day with lawmakers from their districts to highlight reforms that are most important to them and their communities.
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February 25, 2023
A new map released by the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters today shows that the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio is one of at least 224 incidents involving hazardous chemicals – including toxic releases, fires and explosions – that have occurred since January 1, 2022. The map will be periodically updated through the year to reflect new chemical incidents.
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January 27, 2023
Dollar General, the largest discount retail store in the United States, took an important step to improve product safety this week by signing onto the Chemical Footprint Project, a benchmarking metric that helps companies quantify the total mass of chemicals of concern in their products, and understand opportunities for safer chemicals in their supply chains. “We commend Dollar General for taking a hard look at its chemical footprint,” said José Bravo, National Coordinator of the Campaign for Healthier Solutions. “But we won’t stop organizing until the company adopts a robust chemical policy and phases out all chemicals of concern from its products.”
Read MoreNovember 22, 2022
The CEQ today announced that Version 1.0 of the CEJST includes nine new datasets that expand its criteria for disadvantage, and now capture projected climate risk, lack of indoor plumbing, linguistic isolation, redlining data, legacy pollution, and water pollution. These added indicators help the tool better identify farmworker communities, who often experience unsafe housing conditions, and communities who experience environmental injustices due to the legacy of racist public policy. The CEJST also identifies lands that are within the boundaries of Federally Recognized Tribes and locations of Alaska Native Villages as disadvantaged communities. These improvements to the CEJST directly incorporate several of our recommendations, and reassure us that the CEQ is laying out a more transparent, iterative and democratic process for identifying communities eligible for Justice40 benefits.
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November 16, 2022
Today, 50 organizations sent a public letter to the House Agriculture Committee and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, calling for a transformative 2023 Farm Bill. They urged the legislators to incentivize reductions in pesticide use, include provisions to protect farmworker health, and increase funding and research for organic and regenerative farming, representing fenceline communities, food system workers and farmworkers, family farmers, businesses, scientists, and environmental health and justice organizations.The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that global agriculture contributes 34% of the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change, but the Farm Bill has not explicitly addressed climate change since 1990. An estimated 1 billion pounds of pesticides, manufactured from fossil fuel feedstocks, are used on United States farms each year. The next Farm Bill could decrease agricultural carbon emissions by incentivizing farmers to reduce reliance on pesticides, in favor of regenerative, climate-resilient practices such as certified organic farming, the letter states.
Read MoreNovember 1, 2022
On Monday, October 31st, 2022, 86 organizations, including Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) submitted a joint public comment to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on proposed revisions to its Risk Management Program (RMP) rule. The EPA intends these revisions to “make communities safer by reducing the frequency of chemical releases and their adverse effects.” But in their comment letter, the organizations stress that the proposed rule is too weak to prevent future chemical disasters. “Fenceline communities, facility workers, and a wide variety of experts have demonstrated conclusively to EPA that voluntary measures are not working to prevent chemical incidents,” states the letter. “There is abundant evidence available to EPA of policies and methods proven to reduce and remove hazards. EPA needs to finally deliver the basic and common-sense protections that communities, workers, and safety experts have been seeking for too long.”
Read MoreOctober 26, 2022
On September 26-28, 2022 the EPA held a set of public hearings on proposed changes to its Risk Management Plan rule, which regulates approximately 12,000 facilities that use or store hazardous chemicals nationwide. Our members, staff, and partners turned out in force to speak in favor of strengthening the rule to prevent chemical disasters. Here’s what they had to say:
Read MoreSeptember 20, 2022
Today, Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform released a report that profiles three chemical incidents that occurred within two weeks this January, and recommends specific safety measures that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should require in order to prevent future chemical disasters. Preventing Disaster offers actionable recommendations the EPA should include in its final rule that could prevent similar incidents from happening in the future, including: requiring all RMP facilities to consider, document, and implement safer chemicals and technologies; expanding the Risk Management Program to cover ammonium nitrate and other hazardous chemicals which remain excluded in the proposed rule; requiring RMP facilities to not only consider the risks posed by natural hazards, as proposed in the draft rule, but to take meaningful steps to prepare for those risks, such as implementing backup power for chemical production and storage processes. Read More
September 20, 2022
Today, Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) released a report that profiles three chemical incidents that occurred within two weeks this January, and recommends specific safety measures that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should require in order to prevent future chemical disasters. On January 14, 2022, a fire at a warehouse in Passaic, New Jersey came dangerously close to igniting the adjacent Qualco Inc. facility where an estimated 3 million pounds of hazardous chemicals were stored. According to fire officials, this could have caused “one of the most catastrophic chemical disasters in the region in recent history.” Facilities like Qualco Inc. are not currently covered by the EPA’s Risk Management Program despite storing large chemical stockpiles. The facility was therefore not required under the RMP rule to report the hazardous chemicals on site to EPA, conduct a worst-case release scenario analysis, coordinate incident planning with local first responders, or consider measures to prevent a chemical disaster. Read More
September 20, 2022
On January 31, 2022, a fire at the Winston Weaver Fertilizer plant in Winston-Salem North Carolina caused 6,500 people to evacuate, emitted unsafe levels of air pollution, and nearly triggered a deadly ammonium nitrate explosion. Ammonium nitrate is not currently covered under the RMP rule, and EPA’s newly proposed changes do not expand the Program to cover any new chemicals, ignoring the recommendations of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board and the National Fire Protection Association.
Read MoreSeptember 20, 2022
Today, Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform released a report that profiles three chemical incidents that occurred within two weeks this January, and recommends specific safety measures that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should require in order to prevent future chemical disasters. On August 31, 2022, the EPA published proposed revisions to the Risk Management Program (RMP), which regulates approximately 12,000 high-risk facilities in the U.S. that use or store highly hazardous chemicals. EPA was specifically directed by Congress to use this program to prevent disasters, yet more than 140 harmful chemical incidents occur on average every year. On January 26, 2022, an explosion at the Westlake Chemical South plant caused 7,000 students to shelter in place in the Lake Charles area, and sent a plume of foul-smelling smoke into the air. This facility has reported at least 14 other chemical incidents to the EPA. But under the agency’s newly proposed RMP rule, it would be exempted from requirements to consider and document safer technology and chemical alternatives, and it would not require that safer chemicals or processes be implemented. Read More
August 19, 2022
The Coming Clean network looks forward to carefully reviewing the new draft Risk Management Plan Rule, in strategic partnership with the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform. Our members, which include health and policy experts, environmental health and justice organizations and frontline community members, have been vocal about the urgent need to update this rule with the aim of preventing chemical disasters. Chemical releases, fires, and explosions occur with disturbing regularity in the US. On average, over 100 harmful incidents occur every year at RMP facilities, frequently causing schools to shelter in place, residents to evacuate, and harmful air pollution to spike. Communities of color and low-income communities disproportionately bear the impact of these disasters. Read More
July 29, 2022
The proposed Inflation Reduction Act takes significant steps to address the climate crisis and to redress legacy pollution in communities facing multiple, cumulative chemical and health hazards every day. We celebrate the bill’s inclusion of $60 billion in investments to support Environmental Justice, which rests on decades of advocacy by the communities most harmed by toxic chemicals, climate change, and systemic racism.
Read MoreJuly 27, 2022
Over 90 organizations joined Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform in expressing strong support for the Environmental Justice for All Act (H.R. 2021), as it goes before the House Committee on Natural Resources for markup today, urging committee members to “advance this important legislation swiftly to a vote on the House floor.”
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