EPA will revoke approval of Chevron’s plastic-based fuels that are likely to cause cancer
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to revoke and reconsider approval for Chevron to produce 18 plastic-based fuels, including some that an internal agency review found to be highly likely to cause cancer.
In a recent lawsuit, the federal agency said it “has substantial concerns” that the approval order “may have been issued in error.” The EPA gave a Chevron refinery in Mississippi the green light to release the chemicals in 2022 under a “climate-friendly” initiative intended to encourage alternatives to oil, as ProPublica and the Guardian reported last year.
An investigation by ProPublica and The Guardian found that the EPA had calculated that one of the chemicals intended as jet fuel was expected to cause cancer in the US. one in four people exposed during their lifetime.
The risk from another plastic-based chemical, an additive to marine fuel, was more than 1 million times higher than the agency usually considers acceptable – so high that everyone is exposed to it throughout their lives expected to develop canceraccording to a document obtained through a public records request. The EPA did not mention the marine fuel additive’s sky-high cancer risk in the agency’s document approving production of the chemicals. When ProPublica asked why, the EPA said it “accidentally” left it out.
Although the law requires the agency to address unreasonable health risks when it identifies them, the EPA’s approval document, known as a consent order, did not include instructions on how the company should mitigate cancer risks or several other health threats from the chemicals. except that employees must wear gloves.
After ProPublica and the Guardian reported on Chevron’s plan to make chemicals from discarded plastic, a community group near the refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, decided to sued the EPA in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The group, Cherokee Concerned Citizens, asked the court to invalidate the agency’s approval of the chemicals.
When ProPublica and the Guardian raised questions about the plastic-based chemicals for several months, the EPA defended its decision to allow Chevron to make them. But in the motion filed on September 20the agency said it would reconsider its previous position. In a statement accompanying the motion, Shari Barash, director of the EPA’s new chemicals division, explained the decision as based on “potential flaws in the order.”
Barash also wrote that the agency had used conservative methods in assessing the chemicals, resulting in an overestimation of the risk they posed. The EPA’s motion said the agency wanted to reconsider its decision and “give further consideration to the limitations” of the risk assessment, as well as the “alleged deficiencies” identified by environmental groups.
When asked last week for an accurate estimate of the chemicals’ actual risk, the EPA declined to respond, citing pending litigation. The EPA also did not respond when asked why it did not acknowledge that its approval may have been granted in error in the months ProPublica asked.
Chevron, which has not yet started making the chemicals, did not respond to a question about the potential health effects. The company emailed a statement saying: “Chevron understands that EPA told the court that the agency had overestimated the hazards under these permits.”
As ProPublica and The Guardian noted last year, making fuel from plastic is in some ways worse for the climate than simply getting it straight from coal, oil or gas. That’s because almost all plastic comes from fossil fuels, and additional fossil fuels are used to generate the heat that turns discarded plastic into fuels.
Katherine O’Brien, a senior attorney at Earthjustice who is representing Cherokee Concerned Citizens in its lawsuit, said she was concerned that the EPA, after revoking its approval to produce the chemicals, could reauthorize it to make them. which could cause her clients to leave. in danger.
“I would say it’s a vigilance victory,” O’Brien said of the EPA’s plan to revoke the approval. “We are certainly keeping an eye on any new decision that would re-approve these chemicals.”