Press Releases

 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. 

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.” 

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.

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.

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.”

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:

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. 

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.”

Today, Coming Clean released a paper outlining ten steps needed to transform the chemical sector by replacing hazardous petrochemicals with safer alternatives. Fundamental changes to the chemical sector are needed because, as scientists recently confirmed, chemical pollution has crossed a “planetary boundary,” threatening the stability of Earth’s life-supporting ecosystems. The chemical sector is also a major contributor of greenhouse gasses that fuel the climate crisis. Seven high-hazard and fossil fuel intensive “platform” chemicals - methanol, ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, toluene, and xylene -  which are the basis for 90% of the chemicals on the market today, must be replaced with lower hazard, non-fossil-fuel derived substitutes, the paper urges. Benzene and butadiene, for example, are commonly released from chemical production sites in the US with devastating impacts on environmental justice communities in Louisville, Houston and beyond.

Coming Clean, the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) and the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts Lowell urged The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to inclusively engage and address the harms faced by communities disproportionately affected by current practices of chemical use, production and disposal, as the Office develops a definition of Sustainable Chemistry. “Arriving at a new understanding of Sustainable Chemistry is an opportunity to rethink our attitudes about whether we are willing to permit the chemical industry to cause any level of ‘acceptable harm,’” said Judith Robinson, Executive Director of Coming Clean. “Truly sustainable chemistry that doesn’t harm human health, future generations, or the planet will require an intentional focus on those most injured by the current system and a complete transformation away from fossil carbon-based chemicals and other inherently toxic chemistries.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is updating the Risk Management Plan (RMP) Rule, a policy meant to protect community members who live and work near high-risk chemical facilities. In a new letter, hundreds of health professionals are calling on EPA to set the strongest possible standards, demanding reforms that bring chemical-safety rules in line with the demands of both science and justice. While more than 200 million people in the U.S. live, work, or attend school near an RMP-covered facility, the threat these facilities pose is more severe for low-income households and communities of color, who are more likely to live near the fence line of one or more hazardous facilities. 

28 organizations today 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), sponsored by Representatives Raúl Grijalva and Donald McEachin. In a letter, they urged the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee to “advance this important legislation quickly to begin remedying the long history of environmental racism and injustice, and cumulative and disproportionate health and environmental impacts, that affects communities across the country.”