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The Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters published updates to its open-access chemical disaster tracking tool today that allow users to see how close they live to highly hazardous facilities covered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Management Program (RMP). The Chemical Incident Tracker continues to allow users to search for chemical releases, fires and explosions that have been reported in the media since January 2021, using an interactive map. The tracker is updated with new incidents weekly. 

Exposure to chemical plant pollution can shorten lives and contribute to many health problems. Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)  finally took action to reduce emissions of cancer-causing toxics like ethylene oxide and chloroprene from chemical plants, and developmentally-toxic mercury and heavy metals from coal plants. President Trump’s proclamations give over 150 facilities (52 chemical plants, 39 sterilizers and 68 of the country’s dirtiest coal plants) a free pass to ignore these pollution-reducing rules that would otherwise protect lives and health. 

A coalition of environmental, labor and public safety groups are calling on US lawmakers to reject the Trump administration’s move to eliminate a federal unit that investigates chemical accidents, citing risks to more than 170 million people who lives in zones at risk for such events. In a July 17 letter to leaders in the US House and Senate, the coalition said the White House plan to eliminate the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) comes at a time when there have been at least 105 “serious chemical disasters” reported so far this year.

A coalition led by environmental justice organizations filed a suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today for refusing to issue long-overdue rules to prevent hazardous-substance discharges that threaten public health and contaminate waterways. Across the United States, more than 100,000 facilities make, store, or use hundreds of hazardous chemicals linked to reproductive, developmental, and neurological harm – including benzene, hydrogen sulfide, sulfuric acid, hydrogen cyanide, and hydrochloric acid. “For generations environmental justice communities have lived next to some of the most hazardous facilities in the country that threaten the bodies of water our families rely on to survive. Now more than ever we must prioritize creating safe and healthy places where all of our children can thrive and grow.” said Michele Roberts, National Coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform. “The EPA’s do-nothing approach leaves us one incident away from a catastrophe.”

he U.S. Steel plant where two workers were killed and 10 injured in an explosion on Monday had a history of chemical accidents — but it was one of hundreds of high-risk chemical facilities that were recently hidden from the public after demands from the chemical industry. The Trump administration, at the behest of the powerful chemical lobby, has been working to gut oversight of so-called Risk Management Program facilities, chemical plants that are considered at the highest risk of deadly explosions. In April, two months after an explicit request from industry, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scrubbed a tracking tool listing such facilities from its website. “This isn’t U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works’ first incident,” Maya Nye, the federal policy director of Coming Clean, a chemical watchdog group, told The Lever. “Any time the same facility has repeated disasters, that’s a regulatory failure.”

Legislative language moving through Congress, intended to prevent farmers, consumers, and workers from holding pesticide manufacturers accountable for the harm caused by their toxic products, is being opposed by a broad coalition of farmers, beekeepers, consumers, environmentalists, and workers, with the release of a joint statement opposing a dramatic change in a fundamental legal right.  The document, Protect the Right of Farmers, Consumers, and Workers to Hold Pesticide Companies Accountable for Their Harmful Products, is joined by 51 organizations, coalitions, businesses, and leaders representing tens of thousands of members and communities. The legislation is hidden in a provision of the Appropriations bill (Section 453) that has passed through the Appropriations Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, which is headed for a vote in the full House, followed by the U.S. Senate. 

Bakelite Synthetics, the only major source of formaldehyde emissions in Jefferson County, will have more time to comply with Biden-era pollution control requirements following a Trump proclamation. The plant neighbors the Riverside Gardens community, where residents have raised concerns about chemical emissions and other hazards in the past. "This would be the perfect time for this city to strengthen that permit in an effort to reduce our exposure to any of the chemicals coming from Bakelite," Eboni Cochran, a longtime environmental justice advocate with Rubbertown Emergency ACTion, or REACT, said in a text message. "There are solutions," Cochran said. "The city just needs to have enough will and courage to protect its residents."