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(ACC Mentioned) Making In Vitro Chemical Data Useful for Decisions
Mar 1, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Scientists working for federal agencies, chemical manufacturers and other institutions are working to combine information from in vitro chemical bioactivity tests and computer models with exposure estimates to provide useful information for regulatory agencies and others making decisions about chemicals. -
(ACC Mentioned) Udall Seeks Update of Federal Chemical Rules
Feb 29, 2016 | Las Cruces Sun-News
By Walter Rubel
Hundreds of new chemicals are brought onto the market every year for use in a wide variety of products that we come into contact with on a daily basis, without ever having to pass a safety review from the federal government. -
Procter & Gamble Leads Industry Toward Ingredient Transparency
Feb 29, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Monica Amarelo
EWG commended Procter & Gamble, the multinational manufacturer of family, personal care and household products, for taking a significant step today toward greater transparency about its ingredients by making public a list of more than 140 chemicals it does not use in any fragrances in its brands. -
States to Focus on Flame Retardants, Chemical Disclosure
Mar 1, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
In 2016, states with Republican- and Democratic-controlled legislatures are expected to consider bills to phase out flame retardants, increase chemical disclosure and reduce children's exposure to lead, cadmium and other chemicals. -
Immunotoxicity From PFOA, PFOS Analyzed in Report
Mar 1, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The National Toxicology Program will release for public comment by June 7 a draft monograph analyzing the immunotoxicity effects resulting from exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS). -
Elevated PFOA Found in 29 Percent of Hoosick Falls Wells
Mar 1, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
The chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) has been found at levels exceeding a federal advisory level of 100 parts per trillion in 29 percent of the public and private wells recently tested by New York in Hoosick Falls, N.Y., the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced Feb. 29. -
Monsanto is About to Get Away With Poisoning Communities With PCBs
Feb 29, 2016 | Care2
By Michelle Schoffro Cook
Pull up a chair. You might want to sit down for this news. You’ve probably heard of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). For those who haven’t here’s a quick summary: PCBs were used in the 1930s through the 1970s in electrical equipment, plastics, flooring and many other industrial products, until they were later banned in 1979. -
Milestone for Rail Safety
Feb 29, 2016 | The Times Tribune
A major advancement for rail safety may take place in Philadelphia this week. The Philadelphia-based Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority recently began testing its positive train control apparatus, an automatic braking system. -
Valero Appeals Benicia Panel’s Denial of Oil Train Plan
Feb 29, 2016 | The Sacramento Bee
By Tony Bizjak
A controversial request by Valero Refining Company to ship oil on trains through Northern California will go to the Benicia City Council for consideration. The city Planning Commission in February denied Valero’s permit to run up to two 50-car trains a day to its bayside refinery. The oil company filed an appeal Monday. The City Council can hear the appeal as early as March 15. Officials said they have not yet set hearing dates. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chief: Methane Emissions ‘Substantially Higher Than We Thought’
Feb 29, 2016 | Environmental Leader
By Ken Silverstein
Energy markets may now be awash in natural gas but the fuel has, well, fueled an economic boom in the United States. Not only has it changed the way electricity is generated but it has also given the manufacturing sector here a critical edge. Anything standing in its way? Excessive methane releases could block progress. -
(ACC Mentioned) Report: Cheap Natural Gas Leads to More Plants and Pollution
Mar 1, 2016 | The Associated Press
By Cain Burdeau
The nation's boom in cheap natural gas — often viewed as a clean energy source — is spawning a wave of petrochemical plants that, if built, will emit massive amounts of greenhouse gases, an environmental watchdog group warned in a report Monday. -
(ACC Mentioned) How the Fracking Boom Could Cause Louisiana Air Pollution to Soar
Feb 29, 2016 | New Orleans Times-Picayune
By Jennifer Larino
The nation's stockpiles of cleaner-burning natural gas are overflowing, the result of a shale fracking boom some politicians and scientists argue has helped reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. A new report says Louisiana air pollution may skyrocket because of the shale revolution. -
(ACC Mentioned) Low Oil, Natural Gas Prices Driving A Building Boom In US Petrochemicals Sector: Report
Feb 29, 2016 | International Business Times
By Maria Gallucci
The plunge in energy prices is driving a U.S. building boom for plants that turn crude oil and natural gas into motor fuels, chemicals and fertilizer. -
(ACC Mentioned) Turning Americans’ Bad Food-Waste Habit Into Renewable Energy
Feb 29, 2016 | Governing.com
By Elizabeth Daigneau
Americans funnel 40 percent of it into the trash, and it’s the single biggest material in landfills. Food, about $640 worth per household per year, is simply thrown away by Americans who, according to a survey by the American Chemistry Council, don’t care how it impacts the environment. -
Report Warns of Increasing Petrochemical Emissions
Mar 1, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Forty-four petrochemical facilities proposed or permitted in 2015 could increase greenhouse gas pollution by 86 million tons a year, according to a Feb. 29 report from the Environmental Integrity Project. -
Emissions of Ozone-Depleting GHG Far Exceed Reports to EPA
Feb 29, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly
Emissions of a potent greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting chemical were of a magnitude higher than was reported to a U.S. EPA database between 2008 and 2012, according to a study released today. -
EPA Has Legal Precedents for Carbon Crackdown -- Experts
Feb 29, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly
A trio of New York University law experts argue in a forthcoming law paper that U.S. EPA has several legal precedents for the Clean Power Plan. -
Rule 'Alive and Well' -- McCarthy
Feb 29, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
While disappointing, the Supreme Court's freeze on U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan "didn't mean that anything on the ground really had changed," agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said during remarks at Harvard University this afternoon. -
Downstream From a Slippery EPA
Mar 1, 2016 | The Wall Street Journal
By Ryan Flynn
The bright yellow water that gushed from Colorado’s Gold King mine and into the Animas River last summer has dissipated, but the environmental disaster continues downstream.
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(ACC Mentioned) Making In Vitro Chemical Data Useful for Decisions
Mar 1, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Scientists working for federal agencies, chemical manufacturers and other institutions are working to combine information from in vitro chemical bioactivity tests and computer models with exposure estimates to provide useful information for regulatory agencies and others making decisions about chemicals.
Environmental researchers and risk assessors met at a workshop the Environmental Protection Agency hosted Feb. 17–18 to discuss ways regulatory agencies could use emerging types of information to decide which chemicals need further review; opportunities the information provides, such as dramatically reducing reliance on test animals; and barriers to the broader acceptance of these types of emerging toxicity prediction methods.
Barriers include both establishing scientific validity and “cultural” challenges, such as overcoming regulators' fear that the tests may overlook disease or that their environmental health decisions may face legal challenges for relying on promising but new science.
New Methods Being Used
Barriers or not, workshop participants said the new methods are here to stay.
“The horse is out of the barn,” said John Wambaugh, a scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency about the advanced toxicity testing methods.
“In vitro” or non-animal based data as well as “in silico” computer models already are being used, said Wambaugh, who works at EPA's National Center for Computational Toxicology.
A central challenge is to key in on refinements that should be made to advanced toxicity tests and communicate caveats about ways the tests should not be used, he said.
William Casey, director of a National Toxicology Program division that co-hosted the workshop, said an outcome of the workshop will be recommendations on best practices to conduct in vitro tests and use the test data and other information to estimate internal concentrations of chemicals that could cause biological activity.
Because they need best practices, EPA and NTP's Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods organized the February workshop, In Vitro to In Vivo Extrapolation for High Throughput Prioritization and Decision Making, held in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Changing Cultures
The issues workshop participants discussed are part of a revolution occurring in the types of data being generated for toxicology and chemical assessments and toxicity prediction models dependence on information coming from health researchers about biological changes that can lead to disease.
Studies of test animals have served as the backbone of chemical safety evaluation and health risk policies for decades.
Yet, in its 2007 report, “Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy,” the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine laid out a strategy for using human cells, tissues and organs to make toxicity tests better predictors of how chemicals might affect people (113 DEN A-3, 6/13/07).
The new advanced tests can be threatening both scientifically and to the culture of regulatory agencies. Many regulators are comfortable with chemical tests in living systems because they can show a spectrum of key health effects they fear might be missed by narrow non-animal tests.
Nevertheless, the speed, ease and low cost of cellular tests combined with what many scientists say is better, more relevant data have prompted the BASF Corp., the Dow Chemical Co., the Procter & Gamble Co. and other chemical manufacturers to invest millions in in vitro research (138 DEN B-1, 7/20/15).
Converting Doses
Participants at the workshop, including Dow and Procter & Gamble Co. scientists, described ways to convert doses of chemicals that cause a biological change in an advanced cell-based test to an estimated concentration of a chemical in a person that would cause a biological effect. These biological effects, such as a signal that indicates the cell is stressed, may be temporary adjustments to changed conditions or early indicators of a disease state.
Health officials, risk assessors and other interested parties could then compare the estimated internal, biologically active dose with the amount of a chemical to which a population is known or predicted to be exposed to in the environment.
“It's not that those approaches are right or wrong, but we need to understand their implications.”
William Casey, National Toxicology Program
Richard Becker, a senior toxicologist at the American Chemistry Council , told Bloomberg BNA after the workshop that in vitro to in vivo extrapolation, or IVIVE, puts cellular test data in context.
IVIVE calculations take the results from automated toxicity screens and combine that with “toxicokinetic” information on how the body absorbs, distributes, breaks down and eliminates a chemical.
Such data allow scientists to estimate internal concentrations of a chemical that cause or do not cause biological activity.
If the margin is large—meaning people are exposed to far less of a chemical than would be needed to trigger biological activity—that chemical may not be a priority for further review by an agency, he said.
However, with a narrow margin, closer scrutiny could be warranted.
The point, said Becker, is that the IVIVE concentration coupled with exposure measurements provides information decision makers can use. “It's very useful for priority-setting,” Becker said.
IVIVE information could help the EPA prioritize which of the tens of thousands of chemicals in commerce should be scrutinized first for potential adverse health or ecological risks.
Best Practices Needed
Using IVIVE information to prioritize chemicals, requires a thorough understanding of the protocols laboratories are using, the assumptions analysts are making and other details that can affect the interpretation of in vitro test data and computer models, Casey told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 16.
As they prepare in vitro tests, laboratory equipment or individual technicians put specific concentrations of chemicals into cells that are in plastic trays with tiny wells. One lab may assume 100 percent of the chemical is available to interact with the cell while another lab may assume a lesser amount is “biologically available” because some sticks to proteins or to the plastic well, Casey said.
The different assumptions would lead to different conclusions about the chemical concentrations that caused, or failed to cause, disease-related activity.
“It's not that those approaches are right or wrong, but we need to understand their implications,” he said.
It's imperative to understand the implications, because high throughput tests, computer modeling and IVIVE calculations increasingly are going to be used, he said. “This field is going to start exploding.”
NICEATM, therefore, wants to bring together key scientists involved with the development and use of in vitro tests and computer models to discuss best practices, he said.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and NICEATM plan to use knowledge gleaned from the workshop immediately, he said.
They'll also prepare a workshop report, which should be available in about six months.
“This field is going to start exploding.”
Warren Casey, NTP
Issues, Questions Raised at Workshop
Workshop participants formed into breakout groups to discuss best practices for their work, information that researchers should share to help other scientists better understand how results were generated and strategies to validate in vitro assays and IVIVE calculation methods. This will allow researchers and decision-makers to understand both the applications and limitations of the assays and methods.
Other participants joined in a breakout group that discussed the use of IVIVE information. Questions they explored included:
• Who are the stakeholders, and what are their needs?;
• What are the training needs for industry and for regulators?;
• What are potential regulatory or other programs that could use IVIVE information?; and
• What barriers exist to the use of the information?
Fear of Lawsuits
During one breakout session, a participant said EPA regional officials were resistant to using in vitro chemical data at Superfund sites out of concern they couldn't scientifically defend them under a key Supreme Court precedent.
The provisions for admittance of expert testimony set in the Supreme Court decision, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., are broadly applied .
The Daubert standard is used by trial judges to decide whether an expert's scientific testimony is based on reliable and relevant methods.
Factors the judge is to consider include whether the theory or technique in question has been tested, whether they have been peer reviewed, whether they are controlled by standards and whether they are widely accepted within the relevant scientific community.
The issue of whether a method has “widespread acceptance within the scientific community” is the easiest point to attack and is relevant to in vitro methods, the participant said.
EPA Program Builds Confidence
Diverse parties need to have confidence in toxicity tests, or “assays,” and computer models, Becker said.
The EPA's Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program developed a peer-reviewed, scientific information package that gave it and the regulated community confidence in three advanced high-throughput toxicity tests, Becker said.
He referred to the agency's announcement in September 2015 that it would allow companies to submit data on a chemical's ability to mimic or interfere with estrogen, the female reproductive hormone (80 Fed. Reg. 35,350).
Jim Jones, EPA's assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, has said the agency will allow the use of additional high throughput tests for other endocrine effects by 2017 (224 DEN A-6, 11/20/15).
“It's not rocket science, just good science,” Becker said.
Sharing Information
During the workshop, participants said building such confidence in other uses of in vitro data and IVIVE information will require agencies establishing “safe harbors,” or situations where companies can share their information without being penalized.
That idea deserves further exploration, Becker said.
The biological activity a chemical may cause does not equate to that chemical having caused an adverse effect, he said.
Some type of safe harbor strategy would allow regulators and the regulated community to discuss such issues without sanctions, he said.
The workshop group that focused on risk assessment and other uses of IVIVE information discussed programs at the EPA, the Food and Drug Administration and possibly other agencies that might benefit from information generated by in vitro tests, computer models and IVIVE calculations.
Programs at the Food and Drug Administration and EPA's air toxics, Superfund and new chemicals division—which often lacks toxicity data about new compounds—will likely be affected by the new tests.
Near Term Application
Stakeholders include not only regulatory agencies and the regulated community, but communities that could be given the results from in vitro tests about a chemical of concern in their neighborhood.
Becker said there must be scientific support for any program's use of information coming from in vitro tests, computer models and IVIVE calculations.
At present, the most scientifically supportable way these technologies can be used is for “read across” purposes, which means applying toxicity activity or other information about one chemical to another similar chemical which lacks data. Such “read across” techniques will be the subject of a March 1 workshop hosted by the FDA in College Park, Md.
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(ACC Mentioned) Udall Seeks Update of Federal Chemical Rules
Feb 29, 2016 | Las Cruces Sun-News
By Walter Rubel
Hundreds of new chemicals are brought onto the market every year for use in a wide variety of products that we come into contact with on a daily basis, without ever having to pass a safety review from the federal government.
Some 80,000 new chemicals have made their way into building materials, household products, furnishings, consumer goods, and a multitude of other items without federal oversight in the past four decades, U.S. Sen. Tom Udall said.
“Every year in the United States, 750 to 1,500 new chemicals come on the market,” Udall said. “And, they get to just come on.”
The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, which regulates chemical use, is the only one of the environmental protection laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s that has yet to be updated, Udall said, who has successfully pushed forward a Senate bill to address the issue.
As a compromise to get that bill passed, it was agreed that some 56,000 chemicals would be grandfathered in, Udall said, meaning they would not be subject to regulation under the new law.
The original law was written to protect chemical companies, not consumers. Before the EPA can restrict the use of any chemical it must factor in the potential costs of regulation and pick the “least burdensome” method for the company.
From 1976 until 1991, only five chemicals were banned under TSCA, Udall said.
Then in 1991, the federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down efforts by the EPA to regulate asbestos, ruling the agency had not considered alternative regulation that would have been less burdensome to the industry.
At that point, the EPA essentially just gave up, Udall said.
“The (court) made it so burdensome to deal with that the EPA just threw up its hands and said, ‘we’re not doing anything.’ So now you have 20-plus years of not doing anything,” Udall said.
No chemicals have been banned since that ruling.
It is estimated that some 20 million people in the United States, and millions more worldwide, are at risk of developing mesothelioma because of exposure to asbestos. Yet, 40 years after that link was discovered, asbestos is still not banned in the United States.
Other agencies have specific duties. The Food and Drug Administration regulates chemicals used in food. The Agriculture Department regulates pesticides. But the EPA is the catch-all. And for the last 40 years it hasn’t caught much.Senate bill
In the final days before senators went home at the close of 2015, the Senate passed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act unanimously on a voice vote. Udall and Sen. David Vitter, R-Louisiana, were co-sponsors.
Lautenberg, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, had begun the effort several years ago. Udall, who had been on the committee working on the bill, took over leadership after Lautenberg’s death in 2013.
About six month before the Senate vote, the House of Representatives passed HR 2576, the TSCA Modernization Act of 2015. The goal now is to reach a compromise on the two bills through a conference committee, Udall said
An analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund compares the two bills. Both create a process to review old chemicals that came onto the market without review, as well as new chemicals. Both place safety above economic interests. In general, the House bill is more narrow than the Senate bill, but is not as restrictive against state action.
Negotiations have already started between House and Senate leaders to try to reconcile the competing bill, a spokeswoman for Udall said. It is hoped they will be able to work out a compromise by late spring or summer.
New Mexico's House members were divided as to which bill was stronger, but all agreed that there was a dire need for reform.
“TSCA was originally passed 40 years ago. Since that time, there have been major advancements in chemical manufacturing as well as chemical safety," said Rep. Steve Pearce, R-Hobbs, who represents southern New Mexico. "Both the House and Senate bills aim to update this legislation to provide consumers with safe choices, while also giving manufacturers the regulatory clarity they need to expand and create jobs. This will result in empowering the free market and protecting the consumer.”
Paul Stoddard, a spokesman for Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-Nambe, notes that he serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which passed the House bill, 47-0. Lujan supports the House version of the bill, Stoddard said.
A statement from Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-Albuquerque, indicated she would be more open to part of the Senate bill.
"The congresswoman appreciates Senator Udall’s efforts to forge a compromise to reform our chemical safety law that is clearly outdated," the statement said. "As this legislation moves forward, Representative Lujan Grisham will look to ensure that it creates a more workable regulatory structure while protecting consumers."
Over the years, larger states such as California and New York have responded to the lack of federal oversight by establishing their own agencies. But states like New Mexico simply don’t have the resources.
“New Mexico has nothing now,” Udall said. “So were relying on what other states do. But the reality is we don’t have the federal protection, so you need something for all of the states to feel comfortable with.”
The chemical industry, which in the past has opposed new regulations, is now on board because it wants one uniform law, rather than having to comply with different laws in different states, Udall said.
The American Chemistry Council and National Association of Chemical Distributorsboth put out statements of support following the Senate vote.
“Today’s vote puts us on the doorstep of finally reforming an outdated law in a way that will build confidence in the U.S. chemical regulatory system, protect human health and the environment from significant risks and meet the commercial and competitive interests of the U.S. chemical industry and the national economy,” said Eric Byer, Chemical Distributors president.Help from Hollywood
Two recent movies have helped to highlight the current situation, Udall said.
“The Human Experiment,” produced by Sean Penn, is a documentary that tells the stories of people who believe they have been damaged by exposure to chemicals and shows how difficult it is to hold chemical companies accountable.
“Toxic Hot Seat” is based on an investigative series by the Chicago Tribune into the use of toxic chemicals in flame retardants used in household furniture.
At about the same time, the New York Times ran a lengthy story on perfluorooctanoic acid, a chemical used in the production of Teflon, and the damage done to a rancher living near the plant when the chemical was dumped into the river.
“The public was concerned to start with, and then that’s driven public opinion. There is a push from the public to do something,” Udall said. “I make the argument to New Mexicans, you’re not being protected at all. You don’t have an EPA on these issues. And that’s very true.”
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Procter & Gamble Leads Industry Toward Ingredient Transparency
Feb 29, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Monica Amarelo
EWG commended Procter & Gamble, the multinational manufacturer of family, personal care and household products, for taking a significant step today toward greater transparency about its ingredients by making public a list of more than 140 chemicals it does not use in any fragrances in its brands.
Reflecting growing consumer demand for more transparency and safer products, the company disclosed its full fragrance palette in 2012. Today it is publishing on its website its list of fragrance chemicals excluded from its products.
The list of chemicals P&G rejects includes a number that have been linked to endocrine disruption, reproductive toxicity and cancer. Those chemicals are still used by other companies in the market.
EWG believes that P&G’s action today is a win for consumer education and protection. We urge the company, as we urge every company in these markets, to take the further step of disclosing the fragrance ingredients specific to each product.
EWG President Ken Cook said:
This decision by Procter and Gamble is welcome news for its customers and could ripple across the entire industry. We understand that such changes do not happen easily or overnight in a company of P&G’s size. But it is clear that consumers are being heard. To its great credit, P&G is listening and taking positive action.
I’m very encouraged and impressed by the P&G announcement and optimistic that before long fragrance ingredients will be fully transparent in the global market. The trend towards full transparency—in food, personal care, cleaning products and many other categories--is not just undeniable, it’s accelerating and irreversible.
Consumers obviously want products that are effective and affordable. Increasingly they also insist on knowing what ingredients are in those products, and want to decide for themselves if those ingredients are safe. Today’s announcement makes clear that P&G is embracing these emerging consumer desires and preferences. The scale of the company and the enormous popularity of its many brands make P&G’s steps a global game-changer.
We commend P&G’s leadership today and feel confident that other companies will soon follow the example P&G has set.
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States to Focus on Flame Retardants, Chemical Disclosure
Mar 1, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
In 2016, states with Republican- and Democratic-controlled legislatures are expected to consider bills to phase out flame retardants, increase chemical disclosure and reduce children's exposure to lead, cadmium and other chemicals.
Managing chemicals is a bipartisan issue, Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States, a network of environmental health organizations around the country, told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 26.
“It doesn't tend to cleave out as a red issue or a blue issue; it's more purple,” said Doll.
Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have begun to take up chemical policy legislation or soon will take up bills to restrict chemicals, require the disclosure of chemical ingredients or otherwise address chemicals in consumer products, Safer States said in a recently releasedanalysis.
Targeted Chemicals, Trends
Most of the action concerns flame retardants. Fourteen states are expected to consider policies to phase out the use of flame retardants and in some cases require labeling of flame retardants in consumer products, Safer States said.
Other chemicals or groups of chemicals that legislators are focusing on include antibacterial agents, bisphenol A, cadmium, formaldehyde and lead, the environmental health network said.
Doll said legislators increasingly are focusing on groups of chemicals rather than individual compounds.
In part this is to avoid “regrettable substitution,” in which one problematic chemical replaces a previous substance of concern, she said.
More scientific data also is becoming available that allows chemicals to be grouped into ones expected to act in similar ways, Doll said.
Legislation requiring disclosure of chemical ingredients is expected to be taken up by at least 12 states, with several bills expected to require the disclosure of fragrance chemicals in personal care products, Safer States' analysis said.
Colin Price, director of market innovation at the Oregon Environmental Council, told Bloomberg BNA chemical disclosure legislation often is issued in tandem with or prior to legislative requirements for alternative analyses.
Such analyses seek to identify new ways to make a product that can eliminate a chemical of concern or new chemicals that could substitute for one that has raised concerns, he said.
Comprehensive policies, which identify chemicals of concern and encourage their elimination, have increasingly been adopted in states such as California, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, Price said.
A Bipartisan Issue
Pamela Miller, executive director for the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, told Bloomberg BNA, that, although Alaska is a state that shies away from government intervention, its legislature has increasingly become active on chemicals.
“The issue that resonates with Republicans and Democrats is health, particularly children's health,” Miller said.
Health concerns are key as the state takes up HB 199 and SB 111, which would ban 10 chemicals or groups of chemicals being used as flame retardants in upholstered furniture and kids' products, Miller said. The legislature's 90-day session began in mid-January and ends in mid-April, she said.
Firefighters are very concerned about flame retardants as studies have documented their increased rates of certain cancers compared to other professions, Miller said, adding “legislators are very interested in protecting firefighters.”
Concern about flame retardants also is a children's health issue because biomonitoring studies have found levels of these chemicals to be three to five times higher in children than adults, Miller said.
The legislation also is hitting home in Alaska due to studies that show concentrations of a wide variety of flame retardants building up in the Arctic, she said.
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Immunotoxicity From PFOA, PFOS Analyzed in Report
Mar 1, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
The National Toxicology Program will release for public comment by June 7 a draft monograph analyzing the immunotoxicity effects resulting from exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS). A peer review panel will then evaluate that draft monograph July 19, the programannounced Feb. 26 (81 Fed. Reg. 9867). NTP decided to review PFOA and PFOS because both chemicals are persistent and have been used for decades in industrial applications and consumer products. PFOS is no longer made in the United States, and DuPont, the primary, perhaps sole, U.S. manufacturer of PFOA has stopped making that chemical, but exposures continue. The monograph is among the NTP's first attempts to use systematic review(ESLW 400:0200) to evaluate the health hazards of chemicals. Deadlines for comments and to register for the July 19 peer review are available at https://federalregister.gov/a/2016-04102
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Elevated PFOA Found in 29 Percent of Hoosick Falls Wells
Mar 1, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Gerald B. Silverman
The chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) has been found at levels exceeding a federal advisory level of 100 parts per trillion in 29 percent of the public and private wells recently tested by New York in Hoosick Falls, N.Y., the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced Feb. 29.
DEC said 42 of the 145 wells tested in February exceeded the 100 parts per trillion advisory level set by the Environmental Protection Agency for the town, while 41 had levels of PFOA below 2 parts per trillion and 62 had levels of PFOA between 2 and 100 parts per trillion.
The test results were announced along with several other steps that New York has completed or has almost completed to bring clean drinking water to Hoosick Falls, which is located about 35 miles northeast of Albany.
The state also announced:
• Point-of-entry treatment filtration systems have been installed at 53 homes and an additional 52 are scheduled to be installed in a matter of days. DEC has received 281 requests for the systems.
• The state has collected 436 blood samples to be analyzed for PFOA levels.
• The village's water mains and distribution system will be flushed in the coming days with clean, filtered water to remove residual PFOA.
PFOA is used in the manufacture of consumer products such as stain-resistant carpets, fast food wrappers and other products that resist heat and repel oil, grease and water. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp. and Honeywell International Inc., have been identified by the state as potentially responsible parties for the contamination under the state Superfund law.
In addition Hoosick Falls residents have filed a class action lawsuit against the two companies in federal court (Baker v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., N.D.N.Y., No. 1:16-cv-00220, 2/24/16; 37 DEN A-6, 2/25/16).
In a related matter, the state has also found PFOA in the water supply of the town of Petersburgh, N.Y., which is about 10 miles south of Hoosick Falls. It has identified a plastics manufacturing plant owned by Taconic as a possible source and is negotiating with the company to pay for point-of-entry filtration systems. Taconic has already agreed to provide bottled water to residents, according to the state.
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Monsanto is About to Get Away With Poisoning Communities With PCBs
Feb 29, 2016 | Care2
By Michelle Schoffro Cook
Pull up a chair. You might want to sit down for this news.
You’ve probably heard of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). For those who haven’t here’s a quick summary: PCBs were used in the 1930s through the 1970s in electrical equipment, plastics, flooring and many other industrial products, until they were later banned in 1979. They have been linked to cancer in animals, endocrine damage, fertility and other reproductive damage, as well as memory, learning and other neurological effects.
Almost all of the PCBs sold in the U.S. where created by, you guessed it, Monsanto.
While Monsanto defends itself against potential legal charges, the United States House of Representatives intends to give Monsanto the ultimate gift in such a situation—immunity against what is anticipated to be millions of dollars’ worth of damages the company faces linked to its development and distribution of PCBs.
Congress is currently working to reform its Toxic Substances Control Act, with the addition of one paragraph that lets Monsanto off the hook for any legal liability for human, wildlife, or environmental destruction the company may have caused as a result of PCBs.
The clause, found at section 7(c) of H.R. 2576, would block PCB lawsuits by state and local governments, as well as American citizens. It would even prevent states from passing their own PCB regulations.
The legislative provision for PCBs, along with several other sticking points, must be resolved before Congress passes the new legislation revamping the way that thousands of chemicals are regulated in the US.
While many people agree that the chemical legislation has been in serious need of being overhauled, this new legislation will largely determine how the chemical industry is regulated, who can sue, and possibly even which chemicals will be allowed or disallowed.
But for some unknown reason that neither the federal lawmakers or Monsanto will take credit for, the new wording serves to protect only a single company—Monsanto, not the thousands of people who may have been harmed by PCBs in the United States. The government itself knows about the very serious health threats linked to PCBs, as is clear in its “Health Effects of PCBs” article on the Environmental Protection Agency’s own website.
The Environmental Working Group criticizes the clause for being “written so broadly it could even stop states and individuals from suing under negligence, product safety, clean air, and clean water laws for damages related to PCBs. At stake are a staggering amount of human and environmental devastation – and a lot of Monsanto’s money.”
In Anniston, Alabama, over 4,600 people have come together in a class-action lawsuit to hold Monsanto accountable for the damage it caused there, including allegations that the company has poisoned multiple properties in the city.
Earlier evidence suggested that Monsanto may also have been involved in a decades-long cover up about the serious health risks linked to its chemical herbicide known as Roundup. Check out my post “Has Monsanto Covered Up Evidence of Roundup’s Health Risks for Decades?”
Why would the government grant immunity to one corporation against the damage it caused in the midst of potentially millions of dollars’ worth of lawsuits? According to the New York Times, Monsanto insists that it did not request this immunity and the House of Representatives denies that the legislation is a gift to the only company it benefits, but I’m not buying it.
The House of Representatives is supposed to represent the millions of taxpayers in the US and not the one multinational corporation with a reputation for environmental and human health degradation – the company sometimes referred to as “Monsatan.”
Tell the government that the “Monsanto PCB Shield,” also being referred to as the “Monsanto Bailout Clause” must go. The company is not above the law and needs to be accountable for the damage to both humans and the environment it has caused. Sign the petition “Don’t Let Monsanto Get Away with Poisoning Anniston!”
Dr. Michelle Schoffro Cook, PhD, DNM, is an international best-selling and 19-time published author whose works include: Weekend Wonder Detox: Quick Cleanses to Strengthen Your Body and Enhance Your Beauty.
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Feb 29, 2016 | The Times Tribune
A major advancement for rail safety may take place in Philadelphia this week.
The Philadelphia-based Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority recently began testing its positive train control apparatus, an automatic braking system. The network could become operable this week on SEPTA’s Warminster passenger line if approval is granted by the Federal Railroad Administration.
Positive train control would have prevented accidents such as the Amtrak crash in Philadelphia that killed eight people and injured 200 in May.
SEPTA has spent about $328 million since 2011 to install the system along 280 miles of track and among 290 locomotives It will become the first commuter rail service in the country to activate the system.
A version of positive train control has been used in Europe for two decades, but the United States has been slow to adopt the technology because of long-standing political opposition from the railroad industry. Congress had mandated the installation of PTC nationwide by the end of 2015 after a 2008 head-on train collision in California killed 25 people and injured more than 100.
In October, though, Congress delayed the mandate until 2018 under pressure from the railroad lobby. Implementation is expected to cost the railroad industry close to $15 billion. Some railroads have yet to install the system in a single locomotive.
Congress, nevertheless, acknowledged the importance of promoting rail safety by including $200 million in funding for PTC in the $305 billion transportation bill that President Obama signed into law in December.
The long-overdue implementation of PTC in Philadelphia represents an important step forward in rail technology and train security. The profits of railroads do not exceed the interests of public safety, regardless of cost.
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Valero Appeals Benicia Panel’s Denial of Oil Train Plan
Feb 29, 2016 | The Sacramento Bee
By Tony Bizjak
A controversial request by Valero Refining Company to ship oil on trains through Northern California will go to the Benicia City Council for consideration.
The city Planning Commission in February denied Valero’s permit to run up to two 50-car trains a day to its bayside refinery. The oil company filed an appeal Monday. The City Council can hear the appeal as early as March 15. Officials said they have not yet set hearing dates.
Valero officials contend the Planning Commission overstepped its authority. “We believe the commission’s grounds for denial are pre-empted by federal law, not supported by substantial evidence, and represent a clear abuse of discretion,” Valero spokesman Chris Howe said in an email. “We look forward to the opportunity to present our case to the Benicia City Council.”
The trains would run through Roseville, downtown Sacramento, West Sacramento, downtown Davis, Dixon and other cities. East of Roseville, the route is uncertain. Trains could arrive via Donner Summit, Feather River Canyon, or through the Shasta and Redding areas. A serious of crashes and fires, including one that killed 47 people in a Canadian town, have heightened concerns nationally about oil trains.
The Valero debate revolves around how much say Benicia has over crude-oil deliveries by rail. Benicia city staff members say federal laws prohibit the city from even considering the potential danger to people who live along the rail line when deciding on the project.
The Planning Commission rejected that view. “Staff’s interpretation of preemption is too broad and the EIR (environmental impact report) should consider including mitigation measures to offset the significant and unavoidable impacts associated with rail operations,” the commission stated in resolution. “The EIR does not evaluate mitigations to uprail communities and how each potential mitigation is or is not preempted.”
The commission also cited localized flood and traffic congestion concerns. Several commissioners said they were moved by testimony from Davis and Sacramento residents, and by letters from Sacramento regional leaders. “I don’t want to be the Planning Commissioner in the one city that said ‘screw you’ to up-rail cities,” Commissioner Susan Cohen Grossman said in casting her vote.
The appeal could revive a debate involving Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, who has publicly called for more oil train safety and has sent out informational emails about aspects of the project and surrounding debate. Prompted by queries from two council members, the Benicia city attorney commissioned an outside legal analysis that concluded Patterson’s actions could be seen as biased against the Valero project.
Patterson on Monday said she will not recuse herself from voting. “There is no reason to do so,” she said. “I’m comfortable going forward. I think it is a diversion. I am doing my job.”
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chief: Methane Emissions ‘Substantially Higher Than We Thought’
Feb 29, 2016 | Environmental Leader
By Ken Silverstein
Energy markets may now be awash in natural gas but the fuel has, well, fueled an economic boom in the United States. Not only has it changed the way electricity is generated but it has also given the manufacturing sector here a critical edge. Anything standing in its way? Excessive methane releases could block progress.
And that’s why US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy focused on the problem during her speech this week to IHS CERAWeek in Houston. There, she said such releases, which are 25-times more potent than carbon dioxide, are greater than originally thought. But she quickly added the Obama administration is providing flexibility to drillers when it comes to cutting those emission rates.
“The proposed standards present a common-sense way to make sure that as the natural gas industry continues to grow. We’re doing what we can to reduce methane pollution,” McCarthy said. “And the proposed standards are cost effective by design – they’re built to reduce pollution that’s fueling climate change while supporting responsible energy development at the same time.”
“The new information shows that methane emissions from existing sources in the oil and gas sector are substantially higher than we previously understood,” she continued “So the bottom line is – the data confirm that we can and must do more on methane.”
To be exact, the Obama administration says that methane emissions accounted for nearly 10 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions in 2012, of which around 30 percent came from the production and the transmission and distribution of oil and gas. And while those releases are down by 16 percent from 1990 levels, the EPA says that they are expected to rise by 25 percent by 2025 unless something is done.
EPA’s methane proposal would require oil and gas producers to cut such emissions from 2012 levels by as much as 45 percent by 2025. That is in their interest, given that developers can sell that “wet gas” to chemical and manufacturing facilities that use it as a feedstock for their processes.
To be clear, dry natural gas can be used for electric generation. Wet natural gas, or natural gas liquids that include ethane, butane and propane, are separated from the dry gas. Those elements are then used as feedstocks in the manufacturing and chemical processes to make universal products, like fertilizers.
Because of the advent of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, developers are able to access the shale gas — unconventional natural gas — a mile or more beneath the earth’s surface where it is embedded in rocks. While the friction between producers and ecologists is heated, there is now a plethora of natural gas, which means that the US is paying half of what they do in Europe and a third of what they pay in Asia.
Indeed, the shale gas revolution is marching on and creating jobs and prosperity in its wake — nearly 3 million new U.S. jobs by 2020, of which 1.7 million will be permanent, says consulting firm McKinsey and Company. Those benefits are dispersed around the United States but they have been especially fruitful for the Gulf Coast and the Marcellus Shale region, where 20 percent of the nation’s natural gas production now takes place.
At present, more than 180 chemical industry projects that are worth $117 billion have been announced, says the American Chemistry Council. That includes new plants and expansions of existing ones from companies based all over the world that want access to inexpensive gas.
But this expansion could be threatened by excessive methane releases. How is industry doing?
Much of the oil and gas sector has taken steps to be responsible, trying to control the levels of methane that escape from their wells and pipes. And to a large extent, it has been successful, although the Obama administration says that more can be done. It adds that preventing leaks so that the escaping natural gas could be captured and resold could increase industry’s revenues by as much as $188 million a year.
Roughly 375 billion cubic feet of methane has entered the atmosphere over five years, ending 2014, says the US Department Interior. If that methane is captured and resold, it could not just cut the level of heat-trapping emissions but it could also go to productive use by helping heat homes and businesses.
A General Accountability Office study adds that 40 percent of that could be captured, meaning that investments in current technologies could easily pay off.
“The goal is to prevent emissions, not impede U.S. energy production,” says Eric Milito, director of industry operations for the American Petroleum Institute. He adds that methane emissions are already falling and that further regulations would jeopardize the energy revolution here.
Here’s the industry’s challenge: If those fracking and other operations allow more than 3.2 percent of the methane they produce to escape, then the benefits of switching from coal to natural gas are lost, according to Princeton University.
So how much methane escapes? Anywhere from less than 1 percent to more than 8 percent, depending on how it is calculated and who is doing the calculating.
“I think most people would agree that we should be using our nation’s natural gas to power our economy – not wasting it by venting and flaring it into the atmosphere,” said Secretary Sally Jewell, referring to the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management proposed rule.
Manufacturers and chemical makers would second that. They are depending on the natural gas to fuel their operations and the byproducts to expand their operations, all of which has accelerated the US economic recovery.
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(ACC Mentioned) Report: Cheap Natural Gas Leads to More Plants and Pollution
Mar 1, 2016 | The Associated Press
By Cain Burdeau
The nation's boom in cheap natural gas — often viewed as a clean energy source — is spawning a wave of petrochemical plants that, if built, will emit massive amounts of greenhouse gases, an environmental watchdog group warned in a report Monday.
The Washington-based Environmental Integrity Project said hydraulic fracturing of shale rock formations and other advances, such as horizontal drilling, have made natural gas cheap and plentiful — so plentiful that the United States has begun exporting gas.
The watchdog nonprofit, which says its mission is to hold polluters accountable and champion environmental laws, is led by Eric Schaeffer, former director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Civil Enforcement.
Thanks to this energy boom, the group calculated that if 44 large-scale petrochemical developments proposed or permitted in 2015 were built they would spew as much pollution as 19 new coal-fired power plants would.
The report said all these projects potentially could pump about 86 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year. That would be an increase of 16 percent for the industry's emissions in 2014, the report found.
The report combined new natural gas, fertilizer and chemical plants and petroleum refinery expansions projects. Natural gas is a prime ingredient in ammonia, a basic element in fertilizers.
Similarly, the report said natural gas is important for chemical manufacturers of plastics and other products.
Seven refinery projects were included because shale oil extraction has surged along with fracking, the group said.
A bulk of these projects is in Louisiana, where 20 of the 44 projects were found. In recent years, Louisiana has embraced a slew of new facilities. The state has long welcomed the oil and gas industry.
The report found that Louisiana's projects would produce the equivalent of 68 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, or as much as 15 new coal power plants. The state has six coal plants in operation today, the report said. If built, the report found that Louisiana's greenhouse gas emissions would go up by about 30 percent.
The Environmental Integrity Project said this potential load of pollution needs to be considered in efforts to curb greenhouse gases.
"The numbers are far too large to ignore," the report said.
The report acknowledged natural gas developments have been a benefit to the U.S. economy and that natural gas is cleaner than coal.
But Schaeffer said a balance needs to be struck as the nation moves away from coal and embraces natural gas.
"If you're pushing one drawer in while another drawer is opening, you need to be thinking about how you can get the other drawer to push back in, or at least slow it down," Schaeffer said.
The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, said in a written statement that cheap, plentiful gas is behind a "historic expansion" of the industry, and it said this comes with benefits for combatting greenhouse gases. It said American chemical manufacturing is cleaner than others places around the world; thus, domestic expansion may result in lower greenhouse gases worldwide.
The council also said efforts to "save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions" depend on chemical products used in such things as insulation, wind turbines, solar panels, lightweight packaging and biofuels.
Eric Wohlschlegel, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, which represents energy companies, said the energy industry invests heavily in technologies to reduce emissions, "almost as much as the federal government."
He added: "We do not believe environmental progress and economic growth are mutually exclusive pursuits."
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(ACC Mentioned) How the Fracking Boom Could Cause Louisiana Air Pollution to Soar
Feb 29, 2016 | New Orleans Times-Picayune
By Jennifer Larino
The nation's stockpiles of cleaner-burning natural gas are overflowing, the result of a shale fracking boom some politicians and scientists argue has helped reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. A new report says Louisiana air pollution may skyrocket because of the shale revolution.
The report from the Environmental Integrity Project highlights expected emissions from the growing number of petrochemical projects planned nationwide as companies capitalize on low natural gas prices. The projects range from multibillion-dollar chemical plant expansions to new liquefied natural gas export terminals and fertilizer plants.
Of the 44 projects proposed nationwide in 2015, nearly half are in Louisiana, according to the report. Once completed, those projects are expected to release up to 68 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, boosting the state's emissions by about 30 percent.
That is the equivalent of 15 new coal power plants in the state, the report says. For perspective, Louisiana has six coal-fired power plants operating today.
Eric Schaeffer, a former Environmental Protection Agency director and head of the Environmental Integrity Project, said those who argue the surge in cleaner-burning natural gas has cut emissions by reducing the nation's dependency on dirtier coal plants have failed to consider areas where the fracking boom is generating pollution. The burst in petrochemical projects is one of those areas, he said.
"I don't think it was factored into the thinking," Schaeffer said.
State and local leaders have lauded the inflow of industrial projects. Louisiana Economic Development counts more than $60 billion in industrial investments announced over the past eight years. Those projects are expected to add as many as 91,000 new jobs in the state.
In a statement, the American Chemistry Council said more than $164 billion in projects planned, under construction and completed "will create hundreds of thousands of well-paying new jobs, strengthen communities and put money in the pockets of American families."
The organization added newer, more efficient plants being built in the U.S. are replacing older, dirtier plants overseas, which could lead to lower net global emissions.
Among the largest Louisiana projects is Sasol Ltd.'s planned $21 billion petrochemical complex outside Lake Charles. The South African energy corporation broke ground on the project last year.
The company has yet to decide whether to move forward with a $14 billion gas-to-liquids plant on the site, but the investment thus far is among the largest in Louisiana history.
In February, the first export of U.S. liquefied natural gas left Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass terminal in southwest Louisiana for Brazil. Several more LNG projects are in various stages of development on the coast. LNG plants have the potential to be big polluters.
The Environmental Integrity Project report notes Cameron LNG's planned terminal in Hackberry was approved in January to release up to 9 million tons of greenhouse gases a year. By comparison, a 500 megawatt coal plant running at full capacity, day and night releases about 4.6 million tons of carbon a year.
Louisiana reflects a national trend of petrochemical growth. The report counts 140 approved and proposed petrochemical projects nationwide over the last five years. Those projects have permits to emit up to 179 million tons of greenhouse gases per year, the equivalent of 39 coal power plants, according to the report.
The 44 projects proposed in 2015 alone are expected to release as much as 86 million tons of greenhouse gases a year.
Schaeffer acknowledged some of these proposed projects may never see the light of day. He pointed to dozens of LNG terminals proposed nationwide to serve what appears to be limited overseas demand for natural gas. "I'm not sure they'll all get to the finishing line," Schaeffer said.
Even if only a share of projects moves forward, the affect on greenhouse gas emissions will be big, Schaeffer said. He said regulators must take a closer look before approving proposals. That includes pushing companies to get more serious about how they control carbon emissions, he said.
He noted most project applications offer carbon sequestration as the only alternative to emitting. During sequestration, companies capture carbon and inject it underground for long-term storage, slowly releasing it into the atmosphere over time. The process is costly and the environmental impact over time is unclear.
"In most applications they make that option look ridiculous and incredibly expensive," Shaeffer said. "Since they can't do that the only answer is 'good combustion practices,'" industry parlance for following existing guidelines for tracking and releasing carbon.
Schaffer said sequestration is probably not the answer. But applicants have to be pushed to explore other technology for cleaning up the air they pollute, he said.
"We could have done better than nothing on many of these applications," Schaeffer said.
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Feb 29, 2016 | International Business Times
By Maria Gallucci
The plunge in energy prices is driving a U.S. building boom for plants that turn crude oil and natural gas into motor fuels, chemicals and fertilizer.
Energy companies proposed or received approval to build 140 petrochemical projects in the last five years as falling oil and natural gas prices made it cheaper to refine and process the raw materials, theEnvironmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit advocacy group, said Monday. Nearly one-third of those projects, or 44 facilities, were proposed or permitted in 2015 alone.
Crude oil prices have plunged around 70 percent from their June 2014 peak of above $100 a barrel on fears of a global oversupply and softening demand. Natural gas prices touched a 17-year low last week after federal data showed a swell in inventories, spurred by the fracking boom and higher-than-normal winter temperatures.
The price collapse has proved painful for oil and gas producers, whose earnings have vanished and budgets have dissipated in recent quarters. But cheaper feedstock is a significant plus for liquefied natural gas processors and exporters, chemical and fertilizer makers and petroleum refiners.
The petrochemical sector was buoyed last week on news that global demand for its products could remain strong over the next five years. The International Energy Agency said oil demand for petrochemicals would rise roughly 2 million barrels a day from 2015 to 2021, a nearly 3 percent annual growth rate.
The Environmental Integrity Project said it compiled its list of proposed and permitted facilities by searching state and federal records for projects with special greenhouse gas permits. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires operators to get permits for new facilities or significant expansions that would boost carbon dioxide emissions by at least 100,000 tons a year.
The 140 facilities, if constructed as planned, would together produce around 179 million tons of greenhouse gases per year – equal to running 39 coal-fired power plants, the group found in its report. The list doesn’t include dozens of smaller projects, including ones just below the 100,000-ton trigger for EPA permits, said Eric Schaeffer, the EIP’s executive director and former director of civil enforcement at the EPA.
He said policymakers, energy industry leaders and environmental groups often overlook the petrochemical sector in broader discussion of U.S. climate change policies. Industrial plants accounted for about 21 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2013, making it the third-largest source behind electricity and transportation, which accounted for 31 percent and 29 percent of emissions, respectively, the EPAreported.
“When you see debates over where we have to go, in terms of meeting greenhouse gas goals in the U.S., I think this big wave of construction projects isn’t accounted for,” Schaeffer said.
Schaeffer said the EIP isn’t necessarily opposed to the petrochemical projects, but he said the EPA could do more to require operators to reduce emissions by installing energy-efficient technologies, adopting less energy-intensive measures and other carbon-cutting approaches.
“We really should be doing as much as we can to make sure we’re squeezing the balloon and keeping the carbon as low as possible,” he added.
The American Chemistry Council, a trade association for North American chemical manufacturers, said in response to the EIP report that the new projects could actually help lower overall greenhouse gas emissions by displacing dirtier, less-efficient production in other parts of the world. The council – whose members include the chemical divisions of Marathon Petroleum Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. – counted nearly 270 chemical manufacturing projects, together worth $164 billion, that were recently completed, are under construction or are in the planning phase.
“Our energy efficiency is improving,” said Jennifer Scott, a spokeswoman for American Chemistry Council.
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(ACC Mentioned) Turning Americans’ Bad Food-Waste Habit Into Renewable Energy
Feb 29, 2016 | Governing.com
By Elizabeth Daigneau
Americans funnel 40 percent of it into the trash, and it’s the single biggest material in landfills. Food, about $640 worth per household per year, is simply thrown away by Americans who, according to a survey by the American Chemistry Council, don’t care how it impacts the environment.
But governments do. As food decomposes, it releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. To curb it, more and more cities are looking for ideas on how to divert food waste from landfills. They’re also testing out new ways to convert leftovers and other organic materials into biogas, a renewable energy that cities can use to run municipal fleets and produce electricity.
That’s what Philadelphia wants it for. Starting in January, the city mandated in-sink garbage disposals in all new construction. The idea is that residents will pulverize their food scraps into a slurry that will wind its way down the drain, through the city’s pipes and to its upgraded water resource recovery facility, where it will be processed into fertilizer products and biogas that will power the city’s wastewater treatment plants. In addition to energy savings, the city estimates that, thanks to fewer trips to the landfill, it will save about $3 million a year in trucking costs.
Requiring in-sink disposals in new construction dates back to the suburban boom of the 1950s, when several cities, such as Detroit, Indianapolis and those in the West, wrote them into their building codes. But, says Kendall Christiansen, a former senior consultant to the company InSinkErator, “Philadelphia’s code adoption is, in my estimation, the first in a potential new wave of interest sparked by recent demonstration projects in six cities and enabled by a paradigm shift from wastewater to water resource recovery [practices].”
Indeed, in-sink garbage disposals were installed in 175 homes in two Philadelphia neighborhoods as part of a pilot project conducted between 2012 and 2013. The program reduced food waste from those homes by an average of 35 percent. Philadelphia is targeting 10 percent of its residential waste with the new requirement.
It’s an attractive idea for cities struggling to get their residents to recycle, let alone compost. What could be easier than grinding up food waste and flushing it down the drain? After all, less rotting food means fewer stinky piles of trash and the inherent vermin they attract. Unfortunately, critics say, there’s no such thing as a sustainable garbage disposal. They argue that the convenience of disposals leads people to carelessly pulverize things they shouldn’t, like greasy leftovers. The disposals also use a lot of water: The average household uses 700 gallons per year just to flush the food down the drain. And the technology that converts food waste into biogas or fertilizer can be prohibitively expensive. Philadelphia invested $50 million to upgrade its anaerobic digesters, where biogas is produced by the breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen. Washington, D.C., spent about $400 million to install four new digesters at its wastewater treatment facility in 2014.
What’s more, for biogas to be most effective, “you really need to make sure you are getting the same amount and type of organic material because the bacteria used to break down the organics in the digester can be a little fickle,” says Amanda Bilek, government affairs and communications director at the Great Plains Institute, a green energy think tank. Digesters become less efficient or don’t work, she says, if you start adding in different types of organic material. That’s a concern with in-sink disposals since officials can’t control what residents put down their drains day in and out.
But Bilek is a proponent of biogas in general. “One thing that is great about it and that sets it apart from other types of renewable energies is that as long as you have a stable and constant supply of feedstock,” she says, “you have a very flexible and reliable and consistent source of renewable energy.”
She points to San Jose, Calif., as an example of an effective biogas project. The city collects food waste from restaurants and commercial businesses, processes it in 16 anaerobic digesters until methane is produced and then, in turn, uses it to power the facility and create fuel for city vehicles.
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Report Warns of Increasing Petrochemical Emissions
Mar 1, 2016 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Forty-four petrochemical facilities proposed or permitted in 2015 could increase greenhouse gas pollution by 86 million tons a year, according to a Feb. 29 report from the Environmental Integrity Project. Those emissions would be the equivalent of 19 coal-fired power plants, the report said, undermining industry claims that natural gas represents a greener fuel source. “This growing greenhouse gas pollution from the petrochemical industry suggests that the fracking and natural gas boom is not as good for the climate as people think,” Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement. Many of the sites in question lie in Louisiana, which saw 20 petrochemical facilities proposed or permitted in 2015 alone. The report estimates those sites would produce the equivalent of 68 million tons per year of carbon dioxide if they all subsequently come online. A copy of the report is available athttp://bit.ly/1TiiF7V.
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Emissions of Ozone-Depleting GHG Far Exceed Reports to EPA
Feb 29, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly
Emissions of a potent greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting chemical were of a magnitude higher than was reported to a U.S. EPA database between 2008 and 2012, according to a study released today.
Higher emissions of carbon tetrachloride could be linked to industrial production of chlorinated chemicals used in PVC pipes, Teflon and other products, says the study published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers say the work could help address atmospheric concentrations of carbon tetrachloride, which remain stubbornly high despite international attempts to reduce the substance.
"We have now an estimate of a developed countries' emissions in that global picture," said Stephen Montzka, a research chemist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory and a lead author of the study. "And it also provides us with a hint of the potential source."
Scientists from several U.S. universities, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Massachusetts-based Atmospheric and Environmental Research Inc. and the Netherlands' University of Groningen joined NOAA-affiliated authors in the new study.
The research was supported by NOAA's Climate Program Office and a grant from the California Energy Commission to Lawrence Berkeley.
Carbon tetrachloride, first manufactured on a large scale in the United States in the early 1900s, has been linked to the hole in the stratospheric ozone layer and is more than 1,700 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The 1996 Montreal Protocol called for a complete phaseout of carbon tetrachloride. Countries have reported near-zero production to the United Nations, but atmospheric concentrations have declined more slowly than expected.
"There's always a puzzle about the discrepancy between the emissions derived from the industrial reported production and destruction amounts, and the emissions derived from the atmospheric observations," said Lei Hu, a research scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences who works at NOAA. "There's a large discrepancy between those estimates. And we don't really understand where those emissions come from, where those discrepancies come from."
While emissions have declined globally, carbon tetrachloride still accounts for up to 17 percent of remaining emissions of ozone-depleting substances. Scientists have previously pegged landfills, swimming pool chemicals and industrial operations as potential sources.
In the new PNAS study, authors collected air samples from nine tall towers and 16 aircraft trips throughout the United States.
"Our goal is to understand, from the atmosphere, what it's telling us about how emissions are changing," Montzka said. "Although inventory-based emissions are essential, here's another way. We're hoping that these two independent methods come together and agree."
They found that, between 2008 and 2012, U.S. emissions of carbon tetrachloride were 4 gigatons per year, or 8 percent of global carbon tetrachloride emissions. In contrast, U.S. EPA data reported through the Toxics Release Inventory show just 0.5 gigaton per year during that time.
"Our results do not necessarily agree well with reported emissions to the EPA inventory," Hu said.
While the magnitude of emissions was different, the new study shows the distribution of emissions follows the same trend as the data reported to the EPA inventory. Texas and Louisiana accounted for two-thirds of total U.S. emissions between 2008 and 2012.
Higher figures in the PNAS study are probably due to a combination of underreported emissions and sources that aren't reporting to the EPA inventory. Industrial activities that involve chlorination of hydrocarbons could be playing a big role, the authors said.
"Although we can't identify that specifically, the distribution of emissions we derived is pretty similar to the distribution of emissions as reported by industry," Montzka said. "So it really looks like something to do with activities related to chlorination of different hydrocarbons."
They also said the results could help explain persistently high carbon tetrachloride emissions on an international scale.
Knowing potential sources is a key step toward addressing the carbon tetrachloride puzzle, the authors said.
"We've had these uncertainties, haven't known where the emissions are coming from. You can't do anything about them until you are able to identify them," Montzka said. "We're hoping that this is another step forward in enabling their identification."
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EPA Has Legal Precedents for Carbon Crackdown -- Experts
Feb 29, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Amanda Reilly
A trio of New York University law experts argue in a forthcoming law paper that U.S. EPA has several legal precedents for the Clean Power Plan.
Those precedents include programs under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act -- under which EPA issued the carbon program for power plants -- and other provisions in the law, according to the paper.
The law professors say they plan to soon file an amicus brief that makes the same point in the ongoing litigation over the Clean Power Plan in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
There are "a wide variety of regulations from the CAA's 45-year-history that provide substantial precedent for the flexible design of the CPP," their paper says.
The paper will be formally published tomorrow in the legal journal Environmental Law Reporter. NYU law professor and Institute for Policy Integrity Director Richard Revesz and Institute for Policy Integrity senior attorneys Denise Grab and Jack Lienke are authors.
At issue are arguments from opponents that EPA's Clean Power Plan illegally includes unprecedented "beyond-the-fenceline" provisions that require carbon reductions beyond what an individual power plant can achieve.
The NYU experts argue that several prior EPA regulations under Clean Air Act Section 111 were based on beyond-the-fenceline reduction techniques. Those rules include the George W. Bush administration's Clean Air Mercury Rule and the Clinton administration's guidelines for large municipal waste combusters and medical waste incinerators, according to the paper.
Both the mercury rule and the municipal waste guidelines allowed for trading as a compliance mechanism, while the medical waste guidelines required owners of facilities to develop waste management programs. The Bush mercury rule was ultimately vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the ruling was unrelated to trading or the stringency of emissions budgets.
EPA issued prior regulations under the Clean Air Act's good neighbor provision, regional haze program and mobile emission provisions that also go "beyond the fenceline," the law experts argue.
"In a number of these rulemakings, beyond-the-fenceline reduction techniques were used not only as a compliance mechanism," the law paper says, "but also to determine the stringency of the relevant emission limits, sometimes justifying more stringent restrictions that would otherwise have been imposed."
The law experts also say EPA programs have previously shifted demand from one energy source to another, including Clean Air Act efforts to address acid rain, which shifted demand from high-sulfur coal to low-sulfur coal.
Environmentalists cited an earlier version of the research in a brief opposing motions for a stay of the Clean Power Plan. The Supreme Court granted the stay in an unprecedented 5-4 decision earlier this month, freezing the program until litigation is resolved.
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Rule 'Alive and Well' -- McCarthy
Feb 29, 2016 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
While disappointing, the Supreme Court's freeze on U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan "didn't mean that anything on the ground really had changed," agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said during remarks at Harvard University this afternoon.
"First of all, people should realize that it's alive and well," she said in an interview webcast from the university's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "Life is continuing [in] the exact same direction it was before the stay."
McCarthy pointed to the increasing competitiveness of renewable energy sources and the momentum -- both nationally and internationally -- toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
McCarthy's comments largely echoed remarks she made shortly after the high court ordered the agency on Feb. 9 to pause the rule's implementation while complex litigation surrounding the plan played out.
"It is not going to slow us down," she told a gathering of state regulators earlier this month (E&ENews PM, Feb. 11).
During today's half-hour interview -- conducted by Howard Koh, a Harvard public health professor who also served in the Obama administration -- McCarthy said she was not slowing down for the 11 months left in the president's term.
"I love my job," she said.
When Koh asked about crises the agency has had to confront, McCarthy named last year's Gold King mine spill in Colorado but said she was taking "more personally" the recently revealed lead contamination in drinking water in Flint, Mich.
Besides dealing with the immediate crisis, McCarthy said, EPA needs to make sure it has the tools necessary to prevent a similar situation from ever recurring.
McCarthy did not address criticism that her agency was too slow to confront the Flint debacle but said former Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman resigned on her own last month because she had become "a lightning rod" in the blame game.
During the interview, McCarthy also highlighted her desire to increase diversity in the ranks of EPA's 15,000 employees. McCarthy said she looks forward to where "we are better representative of the people that we serve."
She also returned to a favorite theme: her fondness for the cooking show "Barefoot Contessa," noting that host Ina Garten once worked as an analyst for the Office of Management and Budget.
Garten "really is fabulous," McCarthy said. "She may be the only OMB analyst I really care for."
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Downstream From a Slippery EPA
Mar 1, 2016 | The Wall Street Journal
By Ryan Flynn
The bright yellow water that gushed from Colorado’s Gold King mine and into the Animas River last summer has dissipated, but the environmental disaster continues downstream. An estimated 880,000 pounds of lead and other metals poured out of the Gold King in August when the Environmental Protection Agency fumbled a construction project and blew out the mine’s plug.
This water raced down the Animas River in mountainous Colorado, and then meandered gradually through my state of New Mexico, the territory of the Navajo Nation and Utah, before dumping into Lake Powell. Geography is important here: The slower the flow, the more that heavy metals drop out of the water and into the riverbed.
From the start, the EPA bungled its response to the spill. The first call alerting New Mexico that contaminated water was on its way didn’t even come from the agency. The water-quality manager of the Southern Ute Tribe, who live in Colorado right on the border with New Mexico, contacted my department with a warning on Aug. 6.
The New Mexico Environment Department quickly dispatched technical staff to take advance water samples, to establish a water-quality baseline. The Animas River is much more than a kayaking spot or a fishing hole for New Mexicans. The drinking water of eight communities—about 90,000 people—is drawn directly from the river, which also sustains crops and livestock, and supports thousands of people’s livelihoods.
After failing to alert New Mexico promptly, the EPA to a large extent left the states and tribes downstream to fend for themselves. No one from the EPA’s regional office in Dallas showed up in New Mexico for nearly a week, by which time the plume had passed. New Mexico’s representative to the EPA’s Incident Command Center in Colorado reported that she was shut out of closed-door meetings where decisions were made.
When EPA staff did finally arrive in New Mexico on Aug. 9, they were rotated out of the state every few days. This led to redundant briefings and inconsistent execution. One EPA communications officer arrived in New Mexico with no capability to text, email or dispatch photos from the field.
As the spill wound its way downstream, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy repeatedly went on camera to say that the agency would hold itself to a “higher standard.” Instead it engaged in a careful campaign of minimization and misdirection.
About two weeks after the spill, the EPA released an environmental standard for the Gold King mine sediment that was an order of magnitude weaker than those applied to other polluters. The agency used a “recreational” standard and suggested that lead in the soil at 20,000 parts per million would be “safe” for campers and hikers. But in New Mexico people live along the Animas, so a “residential” standard would be more appropriate. During a cleanup of a superfund site in Dallas, in the regional EPA office’s own backyard, the standard for lead in the soil was 500 parts per million.
The EPA released a chart that seemed to show lead levels in the Animas to be near zero. But the chart used a linear, instead of a logarithmic, scale. As any high-school science student can tell you, a linear scale can visually compress data and make it appear close to the zero line. In reality the lead levels had screamed past maximum contaminant levels for drinking water, defined as 15 parts per million. We advised communities that drew from the river to close their water intakes and rely on emergency backup supplies, which they did.
Even months later, although the yellow water has passed, the EPA’s data show that storms have disturbed contaminated sediment and pushed lead levels back above the tolerance for safe drinking water. The city of Farmington (pop. 45,000) still shuts its water intakes whenever storms or snowmelt increase water turbulence.
Yet the EPA persisted in claiming that the watershed had returned to “pre-spill” conditions. Such subterfuge made our job of educating the public on the consequences of the spill much more difficult. It seems clear to me that the EPA sacrificed truth on the altar of image management.
Today, New Mexico and Utah continue to work on a comprehensive long-term plan to monitor the Gold King spill’s effects on health, wildlife and agriculture. We have invited the EPA and the state of Colorado many times to join the effort. Both have refused, preferring to pursue a narrow, short-term plan that ignores critical issues such as damage to wildlife and groundwater. As Utah’s assistant director of water monitoring said at the beginning of February, the levels of contamination seen so far could be “the tip of the iceberg.”
Citizens who depend on the Animas River for their drinking water, crops and livelihoods deserve better. They deserve answers from the EPA, as they would expect from any other polluter.
Under Gov. Susana Martinez’s direction, the New Mexico Environment Department is vigilantly monitoring the water to ensure that lead and other heavy metals from the Gold King mine do not find their way into crops, wildlife, livestock or humans. We urge the EPA and Colorado to wake up, drop the charade of minimizing the disaster, and join us.
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