Safe Chemicals and Facilities

A research team led by Nusrat Jung, an assistant professor in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, has developed a new rapid screening method to test for volatile chemicals. This new method, described in a paper published in the journal Science of The Total Environment, can be used in a variety of hazardous spill scenarios to provide responders faster results when checking for chemicals in the soil, water and air.

On October 16, 2024, Coming Clean and the Union of Concerned Scientists published The Community Guide to Cumulative Impacts, a resource to drive policy changes at the state and local level to protect overburdened communities from cumulative chemical and pollution harms. The Guide is available in English and Spanish. The Guide was co-developed with over eight local organizations across the country, including Los Jardines Institute, Clean + Healthy, and COPAL (Communidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina), that have long advocated for holistic policies that can reduce stressors on community health. The Guide defines cumulative impacts as “the combined chemical and non-chemical stressors on a community’s health, well-being, and quality of life.” It compares various metrics and mapping tools that can help environmental justice communities show policymakers that their community is experiencing multiple, reinforcing health stressors, such as proximity to many highly polluting facilities releasing multiple chemicals, lack of access to affordable healthcare and housing, and language barriers.

Over 125 organizations in the Coming Clean network agree that reducing cumulative impacts on environmental justice communities is one of our collective policy goals, as outlined in the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals. We know that environmental justice communities are not exposed to only one polluting facility or one health-harming pollutant at a time. When reviewing permits for polluting facilities, regulators should have to take into account the combined harm of existing industry on community health, and should have the authority to deny permit applications from facilities that add to disproportionate pollution burdens and existing health stressors. Passing cumulative impacts legislation at the state and local level is one promising way to make this possible. In 2021, Coming Clean released a policy brief by Drs. Nicky Sheats and Ana Baptista on state cumulative impacts legislation that passed in New Jersey, which we hoped would serve as a model for other states and cities. Since then, New York, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Connecticut have also passed cumulative impacts laws. Cities and counties are also pursuing creative ways to assess and reduce cumulative impacts, while involving impacted community members in decision making. Could your state or city be next? Read our Community Guide to Cumulative Impacts! 

Expanding the list of chemicals to bring more facilities under federal oversight has become a priority for environmentalists, explained Maya Nye, the federal policy director at Coming Clean, an environmental health nonprofit focused on chemical industry oversight. Being subject to Risk Management Program requirements, Nye said, “would have required [BioLab] to think about, ‘What is the emergency response plan? What may lead to a chemical disaster?’” Environmentalists fought hard to strengthen the EPA’s Risk Management Program to account for the impacts of extreme weather on chemical accidents. Thanks to the regulations finalized this year, facilities covered by the program will be required to consider, and map out, the potential hazards posed by climate change. But BioLab’s facilities, which fall outside of the program, will not.

NEW FACTSHEET In spring 2024, after a multi-year collective advocacy effort, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the “Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention” rule which updated the Risk Management Program (RMP) rule “to further protect vulnerable communities from chemical accidents, especially those living near facilities in industry sectors with high accident rates.” You can read our high-level summary takeaways here.

A challenge to a federal assessment of the cancer risk for a chemical produced in Louisiana used to manufacture goods ranging from antifreeze to detergents has been rejected by a U.S. court of appeals. The challenge of the Environmental Protection Agency cancer risk assessment for ethylene oxide by a Texas petrochemical manufacturer, the American Chemistry Council and the Louisiana Chemical Association was rejected on Tuesday by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It ruled that EPA correctly rejected an alternative study by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that found less cancer risk. Among the environmental groups that intervened in the legal challenge on behalf of EPA are the New Orleans-based Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Louisiana Environmental Action Network, and RISE St. James, as well as national groups the Environmental Integrity Project, Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, or TEJAS, has advocated for decades for stronger chemical regulations like this one. “We remember family, friends, and neighbors who we lost as a result of health-related issues because of highly hazardous air pollutants, including carcinogens like ethylene oxide and 1,3-butadiene,” TEJAS representative Deyadira Arellano told EHN. “We owe it to our loved ones to act on environmental justice and call for enhanced inspections and enforcement at facilities that repeatedly violate emissions rules.”

Last week, Biden administration officials finalized a rule they said would significantly reduce cancer-causing air pollutants, lowering cancer risk and advancing environmental justice goals. But the move by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency left out a Black West Virginia community yet again.  While the rule will target facilities surrounding communities historically overburdened by toxic air pollution, it doesn’t cover the chemical production category that has disproportionately affected one of West Virginia’s only two majority-Black communities. “It’s actually a positive development, but it doesn’t fully address the issues in Institute,” said Maya Nye, a former Kanawha Valley resident and member of the Charleston-based People Concerned About Chemical Safety.