The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has banned perc and TCE, toxic chemicals commonly used in everyday products but strongly linked to cancer and other serious health problems.
The move comes after Donald Trump’s first administration killed the process to limit use of the chemicals, but the bans make it difficult for the second Trump administration to roll back the rules.
The chemicals are commonly used in dry cleaning, carpet cleaning, hoof polish, brake cleaners, adhesives, pepper spray and lubricants.
“After decades of workers and communities across the country sounding the alarm about the devastating health impacts they have experienced, we are pleased to see that EPA has finally banned these dangerous chemicals,” said Liz Hitchcock, director of the Federal Policy for Toxic Chemicals. Free future advocacy group.
TCE, or trichlorethylene, has been linked to reproductive damage in men, liver disease, kidney disease, neurological damage and Parkinson’s disease. It has been a particular problem for those living near air bases or civilian airports because it is widely used as an industrial degreaser.
The chemical can seep into groundwater used as a drinking water source, and officials suspect TCE water contamination sits behind multiple cancer clusters, and sickening and murdering soldiers at bases in the US. Many areas of TCE contamination are assigned Superfund sites, which are reserved for the country’s most contaminated locations. The EPA found that TCE poses an “unreasonable risk of harm to health or the environment” in 52 of 54 applications in industrial and consumer products.
Yet about 250 million kg of the chemical is produced and added to consumer products every year – most of it ending up in water.
Perc, or perchloroethylene, has been linked to similar health problems, including kidney disease, liver damage, memory loss and decreased immune function. It is also thought to cause liver, kidney, brain and testicular cancer.
Perc is also used as a degreasing, lubricating and adhesive in manufacturing and is also commonly found in drinking water. It can also emit a gas through the ground that poisons the air in the buildings above.
Public health advocates have targeted the chemicals for decades. The Obama administration proposed strict restrictions on TCE use in 2016, but the Trump administration undid this in 2017. The Biden administration went even further than the Obama EPA by banning the substances, a step the agency rarely takes when regulating toxic chemicals.
Trump has claimed his new administration will clean up the country’s water and tackle toxic chemicals, but he also appears poised to undermine the EPA, while his allies are already targeting limits set for other chemicals, such as PFAS. His allies at the American Chemistry Council said the ban on TCE is “contrary to the underlying science” and charged that the EPA’s studies were not “realistic.”
It would take about four years for the ban to be reversed, making it difficult for the Trump administration to reverse the ban.
The use of these chemicals also points to a fundamental problem in the chemical industry: safer and commercially viable alternatives exist for most perc and TCE usedbut chemical makers still insist on producing the more toxic products.