Preview Newsletter
ACC AM 10/5/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chemical Office Pick Demurs Questions of Recusal on Past Work
Oct 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
EPA chemicals office nominee Michael Dourson defended his consulting for chemical, tobacco, and oil industries Oct. 4 as Democrats and environmentalists challenged him to recuse himself from certain decisions on chemicals he worked on. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Nominee From Cincinnati Michael Dourson Grilled At Senate Hearing: 'Corporate Lackey' Or Good Scientist?
Oct 5, 2017 | Cincinnati.com
By Deirdre Shesgreen
During a withering confirmation grilling, Cincinnati toxicologist and Trump environmental nominee Michael Dourson defended his record against pointed questions from Senate Democrats about his close ties to the chemical industry and his “moral values” in endorsing weak safety standards. -
(ACC Mentioned) Groups Vow To Raise $150 Million For Plastic Recycling
Oct 5, 2017 | Recycling Today
The not-for-profit organization Ocean Conservancy has formed an alliance with partners that include the Trash Free Seas Alliance, Closed Loop Partners, PepsiCo, 3M, Procter & Gamble, the American Chemistry Council and the World Plastics Council to work to raise $150 million for a new funding mechanism to prevent plastic waste from flowing into the ocean. -
(ACC Mentioned) Initiative Pledges $150 Million To Fight SE Asia Ocean Plastics Problem
Oct 4, 2017 | Canadian Plastics
Major brands, non-profit organizations, and industry groups have joined together to raise $150 million to promote the collection and recycling of plastics debris that may otherwise wind up in the world’s oceans. -
(ACC Mentioned) "No Water, No Beer" Will Feature Brewery Tours, Music & More
Oct 4, 2017 | Mendota Reporter
“Cheers to clean water” will be the toast when partygoers lift their glasses at the upcoming No Water, No Beer event on Thursday, Oct. 12 in Ottawa. -
(ACC Mentioned) Industries Seeks Role In Suit To Defend EPA TSCA Inventory Rule
Oct 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
Chemical, fuel and other industry sector groups are seeking to intervene in environmentalists' lawsuit challenging EPA's rule establishing an inventory of existing chemicals subject to review under the revised toxics law, arguing the case may affect their production or use of chemicals and confidential business information (CBI) claims. -
(ACC Mentioned) Industry Group Urges Manufacturers To Ignore CPSC Flame Retardants Warning
Oct 5, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The North American Flame Retardant Alliance (Nafra) said a Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warning urging manufacturers and consumers to avoid household products containing organohalogen flame retardants is 'misguided' and could jeopardise fire safety. -
(ACC Mentioned)EPA’s Waste Office Rejects Industry Push To Suspend TCE Cleanup Policy
Oct 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
EPA’s waste office is rejecting an appeal from chemical manufacturers to suspend an Obama-era guidance for assessing sites contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) for risks of cardiac birth defects, while also finding no foundation for industry’s claims that it has incurred higher cleanup costs as a result of the guidance. -
Rhode Island Bans Sale Of Organohalogen Flame-Retardant Treated Furniture
Oct 5, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The state of Rhode Island has banned the sale of bedding and furniture treated with organohalogen flame retardants under a law that goes into effect 1 July 2019. -
Saint-Gobain to Pay $20M for Vermont Water Chemical Contamination
Oct 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adrianne Appel
Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics will pay an estimated $20 million to pipe clean municipal water to Vermont residents impacted by chemical contamination of their private drinking water wells in a settlement approved by a state superior court Oct. 3. -
How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World
Oct 4, 2017 | The Atlantic
By Rebecca Altman
The organic compounds that enabled industrialization have unintended, long-lasting consequences for the planet’s life. -
Canada Proposes Removing 83 Substances From NDSL Due To Potential Risk
Oct 5, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
Canada proposed deleting 83 substances from its Non-Domestic Substances List (NDSL) because of findings that they could pose health or environmental risks. -
Draft EU Endocrine Disruptor Pesticide Ban Exterminated
Oct 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
Germany's Bayer AG, Dow AgroSciences, Syngenta and other chemical companies are breathing a sigh of relief after the European Parliament vetoed a draft EU regulation Oct. 4 that could have banned up to 70 pesticides with endocrine disrupting properties. -
Echa Proposes Free SME Access To REACH Registration Data
Oct 5, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
Echa proposes to grant small and medium sized businesses conditional free access to REACH data and joint submissions to reduce the burden of data sharing negotiations for the 2018 registration deadline. -
Bringing Sanity Back To Europe’s Glyphosate Debate
Oct 5, 2017 | Euractiv
By Pieter Cleppe.
EU member states, which are already meeting on 5 October about this, are expected to decide on whether to extend its market authorisation for another ten years. -
Appeals Court Cancels Arguments On Second LNG Challenge
Oct 5, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darius Dixon
A three-judge federal appeals panel today canceled oral arguments on a lawsuit from the Sierra Club challenging the Energy Department’s approval of the Cove Point liquefied natural gas export application. -
Energy Industry ‘Very, Very Close’ to Voluntary Methane Emissions Reduction Program, Says Shell Exec
Oct 5, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jeremiah Shelor
The American Petroleum Institute is getting "very, very close" to formally adopting a voluntary program to curb methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, Royal Dutch Shell plc's Greg Guidry, executive vice president of unconventionals, said this week. -
Interior Wants to Freeze Obama-era Methane Limits
Oct 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy and David Schultz
The Interior Department wants to temporarily stop enforcing an Obama-era rule that limited methane emissions from oil and gas drillers operating on federal lands. -
Explosion Rocks Eastman Chemical Plant In Tenn.
Oct 4, 2017 | Chem.Info
By Meagan Parrish
An explosion at an Eastman Chemical plant in Kingsport, Tenn. released large plumes of black smoke on Wednesday morning. -
Trump Picks Amtrak Critic For Board
Oct 5, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Camille von Kaenel and Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
President Trump intends to nominate former Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), who voted against increasing funding for Amtrak, to be a member of the rail service's board for a term of five years. -
Trump Takes a First Step Toward Scrapping Obama’s Global Warming Policy
Oct 4, 2017 | The New York Times
By Lisa Friedman
The Trump administration will repeal the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s effort to fight climate change, and will ask the public to recommend ways it could be replaced, according to an internal Environmental Protection Agency document. -
Trump Said to Begin Repeal of Obama Power Plant Emission Cuts
Oct 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The Trump administration will propose repealing former President Barack Obama's signature plan for combating climate change by asserting that its expansive approach to addressing carbon emissions exceeds legal limits, according to a person familiar with the deliberations. -
Strategic Plan Mum On Climate, Big On 'Federalism'
Oct 4, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
A draft version of U.S. EPA's new long-term strategic plan is devoid of any reference to climate change, while highlighting the need to streamline the environmental permitting process and create "consistency and certainty for the regulated community." -
Barrasso Hedges On Dourson's Confirmation Prospects As EPA Toxics Chief
Oct 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves, Maria Hegstad and David LaRoss
Senate environment committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) appears to be hedging on whether the Trump administration's controversial nominee, Michael Dourson, to lead EPA's toxics office has sufficient majority support to win confirmation. -
48 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump
Oct 5, 2017 | The New York Times
By Nadja Popovich And Livia Albeck-Ripka
Since taking office in January, President Trump has made eliminating federal regulations a priority. His administration — with help from Republicans in Congress — has often targeted environmental rules it sees as overly burdensome to the fossil fuel industry, including major Obama-era policies aimed at fighting climate change.
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Chemical Office Pick Demurs Questions of Recusal on Past Work
Oct 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
EPA chemicals office nominee Michael Dourson defended his consulting for chemical, tobacco, and oil industries Oct. 4 as Democrats and environmentalists challenged him to recuse himself from certain decisions on chemicals he worked on.
Dourson declined to answer whether he would recuse himself from decisions related to chemicals that he had previously independently consulted on for companies, including Dow Agrosciences, DuPont, and Koch Industries, saying he would follow the agency's guidance on ethics and potential conflicts of interest.
A professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati and head of the university's Risk Science Center, Dourson is the White House's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. In that role he would oversee pesticide programs and the implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act, which was amended in 2016.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in his opening remarks that “blind opposition” from Democrats to all of the Trump administration's EPA nominees has “stalled” the confirmation process in the Senate. Barrasso highlighted the nomination of Susan Bodine to lead the agency's enforcement office, which he said has been “held up” by Democrats since her nomination was approved by the committee in July.
Dedicate ‘Mind, Body and Spirit’
Dourson has emerged as a lightning rod for controversy over the last decade as head of the nonprofit Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), where critics say he worked with industry to downplay the risks of a a number of likely carcinogens and a pesticide linked to neurodevelopmental delays in children.
“I can give you as many or more examples of situations where the science we brought forward as a team” that led to a safety determination that was [more protective], he told Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.). “I have been objective in my work and have used sound science to come to my conclusions,” he told Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)
Dourson also defended his work, saying that many of the agency's limits on the chemicals were made later when the science on toxicity of those chemicals had advanced.
He said in his opening testimony that he would dedicate his “mind, body and spirit” to the position of assistant administrator to the chemical safety office.
“I will not deviate in my decisions from the scientific principles of toxicology and risk assessment that have been taught to me by my mentors and coworkers, nor deviate from the code of ethics…nor ever stop listening to my colleagues whose expertise I do not have but otherwise cherish,” he said.
‘Not Ready to Work for EPA’
But, Dourson didn't answer Democrats’ questions on whether he would set aside his previous chemicals assessments, or whether he would lower safety levels of chemicals as head of the EPA's chemicals office.
“I'm not ready to answer that question,” he told Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) when she asked whether he would change existing chemical limits.
“Then I don't think you're ready to go work for the EPA,” Duckworth responded.
Dourson was among the first leaders of the EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS)—a primary database of consensus chemical toxicity values—and has decades of experience as a toxicologist, attributes that have earned him accolades from the American Chemistry Council, pesticide industry trade groups, and former EPA officials.
More than 20 agriculture organizations, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, sent a letter to the committee to vouch their support.
Nobel Prize in Reverse
But Democratic senators challenged Dourson on his consulting work with industry, arguing he often recommended safe thresholds of chemicals tens or thousands of times lower than the levels found by the EPA or state health agencies. TERA has done such assessments for 1,4-dioxane, a likely carcinogen found in personal care products; 1-Bromopropane, a likely carcinogen found in stain removers; and TCE, a solvent.
“It appears you have no compunction to taking million dollars from industry to perform scientific studies on their behalf,” Duckworth said, focusing on Dourson's work with Koch Industries to evaluate the toxicity of petcoke, a byproduct of the oil refining process.
And Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called attention to the chemical contamination in Hoosick Falls, N.Y., where she said, residents “are so affected by the decisions that you have made.”
“If there was a Nobel prize in chemistry in reverse, you would be the clear winner,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told Dourson, a reference to this week's awards for scientific achievement. “It's pretty clear you've never met a chemical you didn't like.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=121717392&vname=dennotallissues&fn=121717392&jd=121717392
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Oct 5, 2017 | Cincinnati.com
By Deirdre Shesgreen
WASHINGTON — During a withering confirmation grilling, Cincinnati toxicologist and Trump environmental nominee Michael Dourson defended his record against pointed questions from Senate Democrats about his close ties to the chemical industry and his “moral values” in endorsing weak safety standards.
Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee demanded answers from the University of Cincinnati professor about the money he has taken over his long career — from DuPont, Monsanto and other industry giants — for research that they said endorsed dangerous levels of chemicals and pesticides in the nation’s crops, drinking water and other products.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., called Dourson a “corporate lackey” who has advocated for chemical levels “that will literally poison people.” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., hit Dourson for his work on behalf of the tobacco industry, asking him to explain “the role you played to hide the truth about the dangers of smoking.”
In perhaps the most dramatic moment, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., choking back tears, said families in her state “are so frightened” by Dourson’s nomination because of his work, on behalf of DuPont, that seemed to downplay the risks of a possible carcinogen in the drinking water of a small upstate New York community. A few of those families were in the audience, visibly emotional as they absorbed the scene unfolding in the Senate Environment and Public Works hearing room.
President Trump has nominated Dourson to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety and pollution prevention office. Republicans on the Senate environment committee seemed generally supportive of Dourson’s nomination.
Chairman John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Dourson was one of several “well-qualified individuals” put forward by the president and blasted Democrats for “blind opposition” to Trump’s environmental picks. Dourson was one of five nominees before the panel on Wednesday, but the Cincinnati researcher was the main focus of Wednesday's session.
In his opening remarks, Dourson said that if he’s confirmed, “I will dedicate my mind, body and spirit to the work of this office.” He promised to protect “the American public, including its most vulnerable” and to be impartial in his decisions.
“We’ll bring the best science forward,” Dourson said. “We’ll be transparent. We will be collaborative. I commit to that.”
But pressed by Democrats on the committee, Dourson refused to say whether he would recuse himself from decisions affecting chemical companies that have given money to his nonprofit research foundation, called the Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment. Among the interest groups financing TERA and Dourson’s research: the American Petroleum Institute, the American Chemistry Council and the American Cleaning Institute.
In response to multiple questions, Dourson said he would rely on guidance from EPA ethics officials in determining how to handle decisions on chemicals that he has studied on behalf of corporate clients.
That was clearly not a satisfactory answer for Democrats on the panel. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said EPA’s rules would give him wide discretion in how to handle such cases.
In another tense moment, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., pressed Dourson to explain his work on behalf of Koch Industries in examining the health effects of petroleum coke on a community in Chicago. Duckworth asked him whether he agreed with EPA’s current assessment that dust from petroleum coke presents a health risk.
“Yes or no?” she asked.
“I’m not really ready to answer this question,” Dourson said.
“Then I don’t think you’re ready to work for the EPA,” Duckworth responded.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., came to Dourson’s defense, asking the Cincinnati researcher why he was drawn to toxicology and what kind of pro-bono work he had done.
Dourson said he decided to enter the field after spending time in Liberia and becoming interested in preventive medicine. He said most of his work was on behalf of state and local governments, not the chemical industry. And he talked about a pro bono case in which he helped a woman and her family get medical and legal help after they had been poisoned by a chemical, which he did not specify.
“I have been objective in my work,” Dourson said.
Dourson’s fate is unclear. If he clears the environment committee, his nomination would go the full Senate. He would need 51 votes for confirmation in a chamber where Republicans control 52 seats to the Democrats’ 48 seats.
Sen. Tom Carper, the ranking Democrat on environment committee, said it would be hard to defeat Dourson but Democrats were going to try.
“There’s really serious questions about your heart,” the Delaware senator told Dourson at the closing of the grueling three-hour session.
“These decisions that we’re going to make, and that you would make if confirmed, are really life and death decisions,” Carper added. “You have witnessed … an outpouring of emotion, almost fear, about what your service might lead to.”
http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/04/trump-nominee-cincinnati-grmichael-dourson-grilled-during-confirmation-hearing-top-environmental-pos/730196001/
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(ACC Mentioned) Groups Vow To Raise $150 Million For Plastic Recycling
Oct 5, 2017 | Recycling Today
The not-for-profit organization Ocean Conservancy has formed an alliance with partners that include the Trash Free Seas Alliance, Closed Loop Partners, PepsiCo, 3M, Procter & Gamble, the American Chemistry Council and the World Plastics Council to work to raise $150 million for a new funding mechanism to prevent plastic waste from flowing into the ocean.
The initiative is being designed to fund waste management and recycling solutions in Southeast Asia, with a focus on investments to improve collection, sorting and recycling markets, says the group, which met in early October 2017 in Malta at the Our Ocean 2017 conference.
Nearly half the plastic that flows into the ocean each year, an estimated 8 million metric tons, escapes from waste streams in five rapidly developing economies in Asia--Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and China—according to the Washington, D.C.-based Ocean Conservancy.
“This is a major breakthrough in the fight for trash-free seas,” says Susan Ruffo, managing director of international initiatives at the Ocean Conservancy. “Our research has found that by improving waste management in Southeast Asian countries, we can cut the flow of plastic going in the ocean by half by 2025. A funding mechanism will take this goal from dream to reality, and support efforts by governments and local groups on the ground to improve their livelihoods and well-being while also improving ocean health.”
Some studies have estimated that more than 150 million metric tons of plastics are currently in the ocean. That number could grow to 250 million metric tons in less than a decade if action isn’t taken, says the Ocean Conservancy.
The new funding mechanism will be operated by Closed Loop Partners, a New York-based investment firm that invests in companies, technology and recycling facilities to add value to discarded materials and advance the circular economy. “This new mechanism will catalyze new investments from the private sector, governments, and development finance institutions; demonstrate eco-system solutions; and build a pipeline of bankable waste management projects to demonstrate investment viability and maximize recycling profitability,” says the Ocean Conservancy.
“Through this initiative, we will invest in and support the municipalities, entrepreneurs, investors and NGOs working to reduce ocean plastics and improve waste management in Southeast Asia,” says Rob Kaplan of Closed Loop Partners. “Our investments across North America -- from recycling collection in Tennessee to developing new end markets for waste plastics in Louisiana -- have resulted in tangible improvements to waste collection and recycling. Our model is to take the best practices in waste management investment, leverage the world's largest consumer goods supply chains, and marry them with on-the-ground partner expertise and work.”
Consumer goods companies and plastics manufacturers supporting the project include early commitments from PepsiCo, 3M, Procter & Gamble, the American Chemistry Council and the World Plastics Council, which combined “have fully funded the design phase of the fund,” according to the Ocean Conservancy.
“P&G is proud to be a part of this initiative,” says Jack McAneny, director of sustainability at Procter & Gamble. “Plastics play an important role in commerce, but they clearly don’t belong in our waterways and oceans. Thanks to the vision of Ocean Conservancy, we now have a multi-stakeholder collaborative effort that can drive the kind of innovation and scale that we need to stop the flow of plastics to the environment and ideally give these materials a second life.”
The initiative aims to share the results of its initial phase of work in late 2017 and into 2018 to help build the field of investors looking to deploy capital to the effort.
The Trash Free Seas Alliance is comprised of: the Ocean Conservancy, Algalita Marine Research and Education, Coca-Cola Company, Covanta Energy, Dow Chemical Company, ITW, Keep America Beautiful, the Marine Mammal Center, the Ocean Recovery Alliance, Project AWARE Foundation, Amcor, American Chemistry Council, Bank of America, Cox Enterprises, DANONE, Dart Container Corporation, Georgia Aquarium, Nature Works, Nestlé Waters NA, Procter & Gamble, REDISA, Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean, the Consumer Goods Forum, Vancouver Aquarium, Walmart, World Animal Protection, The World Plastics Council and the World Wildlife Fund.
http://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/plastic-scrap-recycling-asia-ocean-litter/
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(ACC Mentioned) Initiative Pledges $150 Million To Fight SE Asia Ocean Plastics Problem
Oct 4, 2017 | Canadian Plastics
Major brands, non-profit organizations, and industry groups have joined together to raise $150 million to promote the collection and recycling of plastics debris that may otherwise wind up in the world’s oceans.
The initiative is designed to fund waste management and recycling solutions in Southeast Asia, with a focus on investments to improve collection, sorting, and recycling markets. Nearly half of the plastic that flows into the ocean every year – an estimated 8 million metric tons – escapes from waste streams in just five rapidly developing economies in Asia: Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and China.
“This is a major breakthrough in the fight for trash free seas,” said Susan Ruffo, managing director of international initiatives at Ocean Conservancy. “Our research has found that by improving waste management in Southeast Asian countries, we can cut the flow of plastic going in the ocean by half by 2025. A funding mechanism will take this goal from dream to reality, and support efforts by governments and local groups on the ground to improve their livelihoods and well-being while also improving ocean health.”
The new funding mechanism will be operated by Closed Loop Partners, an investment firm which has invested in recycling infrastructure across the U.S. to boost materials recovery.
“Through this initiative, we will invest in and support the municipalities, entrepreneurs, investors and NGOs working to reduce ocean plastics and improve waste management in Southeast Asia,” said Rob Kaplan of Closed Loop Partners. “Our investments across North America have resulted in tangible improvements to waste collection and recycling. Our model is to take the best practices in waste management investment, leverage the world’s largest consumer goods supply chains, and marry them with on-the-ground partner expertise and work.”
Supporting the initiative is the Trash Free Seas Alliance, made up 28 nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Five members of the group have already pledged enough money to fully fund the design phase of the effort: PepsiCo, 3M, Procter & Gamble, the American Chemistry Council, and the World Plastics Council.
http://www.canplastics.com/environment/initiative-pledges-150-million-fight-se-asia-ocean-plastics-problem/1003442840/
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(ACC Mentioned) "No Water, No Beer" Will Feature Brewery Tours, Music & More
Oct 4, 2017 | Mendota Reporter
OTTAWA – “Cheers to clean water” will be the toast when partygoers lift their glasses at the upcoming No Water, No Beer event on Thursday, Oct. 12 in Ottawa. The event is open to the public and will feature Tangled Roots brewery tours, beer, wine, live music and hors d’oeuvres.
Carus Corporation is teaming up with the Illinois Section of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) to host the awareness/networking event. The fun will begin at 6 p.m. in the Tangled Roots Tap Room at the Lone Buffalo Brew Pub in Ottawa. Tickets may be purchased online at http://www.isawwa.org/event/October_2017-NWNB. Pre-registration is required.
Similar No Water, No Beer events have been popular throughout the state. The Ottawa event, which is expected to draw local community members as well as water professionals from across the region, is part of a nearly 60-year partnership between Carus and AWWA. Headquartered in Peru, Carus manufactures products that help provide clean drinking water for communities across the United States and around the world. The Illinois Section AWWA's mission is to provide resources for the management and advocacy of safe and sustainable water in Illinois.
“To many Americans, water infrastructure is invisible. We take for granted the fact that we can turn on a faucet and instantly have clean water. Water plays a vital role in every moment of our lives,” said Carlos Hevia of Carus Corporation. “On average, beer is about 90 percent water, so No Water, No Beer is a fun way to celebrate the importance of clean water as well as the water industry professionals who make it possible.”
The event is scheduled to coincide with “Imagine a Day Without Water,” (www.imagineadaywithoutwater.org) an international campaign aimed at increasing water awareness. Carus will be advocating the importance of clean water across all of its social media platforms including live feeds from “No Water, No Beer.”
About Carus
A 102-year-old company, Carus produces and supplies specialty chemistries, technologies, and services for water treatment, soil remediation, and air purification. Carus is a member of the American Chemistry Council and actively participates in the industry’s award-winning Responsible Care initiative, sharing a common commitment to improve environmental, health, safety, and security performance.
https://mendotareporter.com/article/celebrate-clean-water-by-raising-a-glass-of-beer
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(ACC Mentioned) Industries Seeks Role In Suit To Defend EPA TSCA Inventory Rule
Oct 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
Chemical, fuel and other industry sector groups are seeking to intervene in environmentalists' lawsuit challenging EPA's rule establishing an inventory of existing chemicals subject to review under the revised toxics law, arguing the case may affect their production or use of chemicals and confidential business information (CBI) claims.
“Here, unquestionably, Movants have vital interests that could be impaired or impeded by the outcome of this Petition,” groups, including the American Chemistry Council (ACC), American Petroleum Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce say in an Oct. 2 motion to intervene.
“Movants’ members manufacture, process, distribute, or use chemicals that are essential to their industries and businesses and are directly subject to the requirements of the Inventory Reset Rule.”
The case, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) v. EPA in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is one of several lawsuits environmental and public interest groups have filed in various federal appeals courts challenging three EPA rules establishing a framework for reviewing existing chemicals under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) signed in June 2016.
The three rules proscribe how EPA will review risks from existing chemicals, which were a driver for TSCA reform, because of longstanding concerns that EPA had limited ability to regulate chemicals already in commerce when the original law was enacted.
EDF Sept. 5 challenged the inventory reset rule targeting what environmentalists say is the rule's overly broad allowance for industry CBI claims that will shield information from the public.
The rule “deviated from the law’s requirements and falls short of the desired goal to improve transparency about chemicals in use, by failing to ensure that CBI claims are appropriately asserted and reviewed,” EDF said in a Sept. 5 statement. “The rule would allow companies to assert and maintain claims that do not meet the law’s requirements.”
The EDF lawsuit came after EDF and other groups had already sued EPA in August over the two other framework rules that EPA finalized in June to implement the TSCA reforms. One of those rules establishes how EPA will prioritize existing chemicals for risk evaluation and the second rule describes how those evaluations will be conducted.
Last month, more than a dozen industry groups, led by ACC, petitioned to intervene in the environmentalists' suits against the prioritization and risk evaluation rules pending in the 9th and 4th Circuits. Neither EPA nor environmentalist petitioners objected. The 4th Circuit granted the intervenor request, while the request to the 9th Circuit is still pending.
In the Oct. 2 request to intervene in the inventory reset rule case, industry groups argue that they meet all requirements to participate in the suit, including that they have an interest in the outcome of the case and that the parties involved do not adequately represent their interests.
“[T]he Inventory Reset Rule will affect the ability of manufacturers and processors of chemicals to protect the confidentiality of their chemical substances, by establishing procedures for asserting confidential business information claims,” the groups say.
The prospective intervenors say they have reached out to both EPA and environmentalist petitioners and that neither has taken a position on the industry request to intervene.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/industries-seeks-role-suit-defend-epa-tsca-inventory-rule
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(ACC Mentioned) Industry Group Urges Manufacturers To Ignore CPSC Flame Retardants Warning
Oct 5, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The North American Flame Retardant Alliance (Nafra) said a Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warning urging manufacturers and consumers to avoid household products containing organohalogen flame retardants is 'misguided' and could jeopardise fire safety.
Nafra's statement encourages industry to ignore the CPSC guidance, published 28 September. That was released after the Commission's historic 3-2 vote a week earlier to move towards a ban on the whole organohalogen flame retardant category of chemicals. The ban would affect:children's products;upholstered residential furniture;mattresses; andthe external casings of electronics devices.
"Fortunately, the guidance CPSC has issued is non-binding," said Nafra, which is a constituent group of the American Chemistry Council.
The organisation says it will communicate with affected manufacturing sectors and businesses to point out that the CPSC's actions "merely constitute a recommendation". The guidance, it says, needs to be evaluated based on the state of the science and the need to fully consider all aspects of product safety, including fire safety.
"The value chain should feel confident that they can continue to use these chemistries in certain applications consistent with existing national and international regulations while CPSC conducts its further analysis of these substances," Nafra said.
The party-line vote on organohalogen flame retardants was pushed through in the waning days of a Democratic majority on the Commission. It granted a petition by NGOs to initiate rulemaking under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA) and directed staff to convene a Chronic Hazard Advisory Panel, to further study the effects of the substances as a class of chemicals on consumers' health.
https://chemicalwatch.com/59700/industry-group-urges-manufacturers-to-ignore-cpsc-flame-retardants-warning
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(ACC Mentioned)EPA’s Waste Office Rejects Industry Push To Suspend TCE Cleanup Policy
Oct 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Suzanne Yohannan
EPA’s waste office is rejecting an appeal from chemical manufacturers to suspend an Obama-era guidance for assessing sites contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) for risks of cardiac birth defects, while also finding no foundation for industry’s claims that it has incurred higher cleanup costs as a result of the guidance.
Office of Land & Emergency Management (OLEM) Deputy Assistant Administrator Patrick Davis, who was named to the position several months ago by the Trump administration, says in a July 26 letter to the American Chemistry Council (ACC) that OLEM will maintain its 2014 guidance as well as related regional office memoranda, declining ACC’s request to suspend those policies.
The letter, obtained by Inside EPA, responds to criticisms from ACC over scientific data EPA relies on in an Aug. 27, 2014, memo on early and interim actions to address indoor air exposure to TCE at Superfund sites and the TCE Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment as well as costs associated with implementing the memo. The letter was addressed to ACC Senior Director Stephen P. Risotto.
Industry groups have long faulted the TCE IRIS assessment, as well as implementation efforts of some EPA regions, which have required increased sampling for and mitigation of TCE in contaminated soil or groundwater that migrates into indoor air.
Earlier this year in comments to the Commerce Department on desired deregulatory efforts, ACC highlighted the EPA policy as problematic and urged the “Department to consider the 2014 guidance memo in its review of regulations that adversely impact domestic manufacturers.”
Industry argues the policy's focus on the risk of cardiac birth defects is based on studies from a single laboratory that are flawed and irreproducible -- though one industry group is seeking to replicate the study. They say the emphasis on short-term risk has driven costly and unnecessary cleanup costs and slowed development.
In addition to ACC's March 31 deregulatory comments, the group reiterated its concerns in a June 22 meeting with OLEM staff and a June 28 follow-up letter from the group, which asked EPA to suspend implementation of the 2014 memo and related regional memos until it completes and considers an ongoing TCE hazard assessment being conducted by the agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP).
But Davis defends continued use of the agency's TCE policy, developed during the Obama administration, and says EPA has been unable to document any cost increases due to its implementation.
“OLEM’s use of the TCE [IRIS] assessment, first issued in 2011 and reaffirmed in 2016, is consistent with longstanding OLEM policy as reflected in the [2014] memo,” Davis writes. He explains that IRIS assessments are OLEM's preferred source of human health toxicity values.
Further, he notes, “Consistent with OLEM policy, the 2014 memorandum did not direct regions to utilize a chronic reference concentration for short-term exposure. Rather, the 2014 . . . memorandum restated the findings of the 2011 IRIS evaluation and cited existing guidance about the use of early or interim actions and consideration of non-cancer health effects.”
He says the memo merely compiles existing information and guidance, and adds that “[s]ince it is consistent with longstanding OLEM guidance and provides information useful to EPA regions, we currently plan to keep the 2014 memorandum and related regional memoranda in place.”
Increased Costs
Davis acknowledges that the OCSPP hazard assessment may provide additional data that was not considered by the IRIS program. He says when that assessment is complete, OLEM will consider whether to update its TCE assessments to reflect the new findings.
The 2014 memo, from OLEM’s Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation to regional Superfund directors, backed “early or interim” action “to eliminate, reduce, or control the [TCE] hazards posed by a site.” The memo backs EPA regions’ mitigation efforts, but also acknowledges the question of what contamination level causes a health risk in the short-term remains unanswered.
The memo was EPA headquarters’ response to long-running industry concerns over how to implement the agency’s 2011 IRIS assessment of TCE. The IRIS assessment set a limit of 2 micrograms per cubic meter of air to protect against lifetime exposures to TCE. But the limit was based in part on a risk of cardiac birth defects, implying a danger from short-term exposures, and raising significant implementation questions.
In the July letter, Davis also rejects arguments put forth by ACC about increased costs caused by the agency’s 2014 memo.
“After canvassing EPA’s regional offices, we have been unable to confirm that there has been a significant increase in remediation costs at TCE-contaminated Superfund sites as a result of the 2014 policy,” Davis writes. He said EPA reviewed its Superfund Enterprise Management System database and found no difference in the number of removals preceding the memo versus the three years since the memo was issued.
Further, the agency has not identified a rise in the costs of employing engineered exposure controls such as subslab depressurization systems, used as an interim response to address vapor intrusion, the letter says.
ACC in its appeal to the Commerce Department argued, for example, that the 2014 memo would increase costs of remediating non-residential buildings in California's South Bay region by as much as $48 million over 30 years.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa%E2%80%99s-waste-office-rejects-industry-push-suspend-tce-cleanup-policy
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Rhode Island Bans Sale Of Organohalogen Flame-Retardant Treated Furniture
Oct 5, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The state of Rhode Island has banned the sale of bedding and furniture treated with organohalogen flame retardants under a law that goes into effect 1 July 2019.
The proposal became law on 4 October without the approval of Governor Gina Raimondo (Democrat) who chose not to sign or veto it.
In August, the Maine legislature gave final approval to a measure banning the use of all chemical flame retardants in upholstered furniture, overriding the veto of Republican Governor Paul LePage. That law takes effect on 1 January 2019.
More than a dozen US states have banned some categories of flame retardants. Many more considered legislation this year to restrict their use.
Washington state's Toxic-Free Kids and Families Act, which restricts the use of five flame retardants in children's products and residential upholstered furniture, went into effect on 1 July.
On a national level, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted on 21 September to ban the use of organohalogen flame retardants in furniture and several other household product categories.
https://chemicalwatch.com/59733/rhode-island-bans-sale-of-organohalogen-flame-retardant-treated-furniture
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Saint-Gobain to Pay $20M for Vermont Water Chemical Contamination
Oct 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Adrianne Appel
Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics will pay an estimated $20 million to pipe clean municipal water to Vermont residents impacted by chemical contamination of their private drinking water wells in a settlement approved by a state superior court Oct. 3.
Vermont and Saint-Gobain had reached an agreement in July concerning the perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) contamination of the well water of about 200 homes in the southern Vermont town of Bennington. The state then asked the Bennington Superior Court to grant a consent order to memorialize the settlement.
Saint-Gobain voluntarily signed the agreement, Dina Pokedoff, Saint-Gobain spokeswoman, told Bloomberg BNA in an Oct. 4 email.
PFOA, widely used in making non-stick coatings, can be damaging to the thyroid gland and is suspected of causing testicular and kidney cancer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It was used by the former ChemFab Corp. in Bennington to coat fabrics. The plant was purchased by Saint-Gobain and closed in 2002.
Tests in 2016 found PFOA in some private drinking water wells at concentrations above the state's 20 parts-per-trillion limit. Investigations tied the PFOA to the ChemFab site.
“Work can begin this year to bring clean drinking water to many in Bennington and North Bennington,” Attorney General T.J. Donovan said Oct. 4 in a statement. Construction is expected to begin within weeks, according to the consent order (Vermont v. Saint-Gobain, Vt. Super. Ct., No. 205-7-17 Bncv, Consent Order 10/3/17).
Filters and Monitoring
Saint-Gobain will bring water lines to 200 homes, plus it agreed to install filters or dig new wells for any additional homes nearby with PFOA levels above the state limit and monitor the private wells nearby where PFOA levels test below the state limit. It must also test any new private wells that are dug in the area.
The company also will conduct an expedited investigation of another area suspected of contamination, according to the consent order. The state is in ongoing negotiations with the company about the other parcel, Donovan said.
The state agreed not to sue Saint-Gobain for the PFOA contamination. But the consent order does not protect the company from suits by homeowners or others who were affected, the agreement says.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=121717393&vname=dennotallissues&fn=121717393&jd=121717393
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How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World
Oct 4, 2017 | The Atlantic
By Rebecca Altman
The organic compounds that enabled industrialization have unintended, long-lasting consequences for the planet’s life.
Deep in the Mariana Trench, at depths lower than the Rockies are high, rests a tin of reduced-sodium Spam.
NOAA scientists caught sight of it last year near the mouth of the Mariana’s Sirena Deep. It isn’t an isolated incursion, but it was nevertheless startling, the sight of those timeless golden letters bright against the deep ocean bottom.
Shortly after came news from another team of scientists who had found in the Mariana an innovation less familiar than shelf-stable meat, but far more significant. In the bodies of deep-dwelling creatures were found traces of industrial chemicals responsible for the rise of modern America—polychlorinated biphenyls.
PCBs had been detected in Hirondellea gigas, tiny shrimp-like amphipods scooped up by deep-water trawlers. Results from the expedition, led by Newcastle University’s hadal zone expert Alan Jamieson, were preliminary released last yearand then published in February.
PCBs have been found the world over—from the bed of the Hudson River to the fat of polar bears roaming the high Arctic—but never before in the creatures of the extreme deep, a bioregion about which science knows relatively little.
PCBs live on in some of the deepest waters of Earth’s biggest ocean.
How PCBs reached the Mariana is still under investigation. Jamieson and colleagues speculated on multiple, regional sources. A nearby military base. The industrial corridors along the Asian coastline. And the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where PCBs glom onto plastic particles caught in the current. Over time, the plastic degrades and descends into the depths, ferrying PCBs with them.
But the true origin of PCBs lies in another time and place, in Depression-era Alabama, and before that, 19th-century Germany at the pinnacle of German chemistry.
* * *
PCB production began in late 1929 in a factory east of Birmingham. The same era that gave us New York’s Chrysler Building, The Little Engine That Could, and eventually Spam brought mass-made PCBs to market.
General Electric and Westinghouse were early adopters. Both firms formulated PCBs into dielectric fluids, the insulating liquids added to capacitors and other electrical components to keep them cool and to prevent fires. With PCBs’ aid, the electric grid spread from the industrialized north into the rural regions of the Deep South and the American West. By mid-century, PCBs had a bird’s-eye view of any block in America with a utility pole and PCB-bathed transformer.
Soon PCBs were added to paints, caulks, plastics, even floor finishes and dish detergents. They were branded, and assigned names like Aroclor. That commercial products contained PCBs was never advertised, explained Ellen Griffith Spears, who wrote the definitive book on PCBs’ genesis.
PCBs slipped into the world, becoming ubiquitous while remaining anonymous. Until the mid-1960s, when the Danish-born scientist Sören Jensen detected PCBs in the bodies of pike taken from the waters off Sweden.
In the wake of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962, Jensen had been dispatched to look for DDT, one of the post-WWII pesticides whose increasing use Carson’s book had questioned. Jensen found DDT. But his data also signaled the presence of unexpected, yet chemically similar, contaminants. It took two years to determine the “ghosts” in his data were PCBs.By mid-century, PCBs had a bird’s-eye view of any block in America with a utility pole.
After that, everywhere Jensen thought to look, he found their fingerprints: in the feathers of archived white-tailed eagles, and in hair plucked from his own head, and others sampled from his wife and infant daughter. His conclusions, published in 1966, instigated a global investigation into the fate and toxicity of PCBs, research now carried forward (and into the deep oceans) by Jamieson and colleagues.
Today, PCBs are well-characterized pollutants—toxic, extremely persistent, and pervasive. All 209 variations of PCBs are known carcinogens. PCBs can alter liver function, and they can interfere with how humans reproduce, develop, think, and mount an immune response. Based on their cancer-causing potential alone, Congress voted to end American production in 1976 by attaching an amendment to the Toxics Substances Control Act (TSCA).
“ToSCA,” as the law was called, gave the fledgling Environmental Protection Agency, created six years earlier, the authority to regulate industrial chemicals. PCBs were the only class of chemicals called out by TSCA; about 60,000 others were grandfathered, meaning their use was never questioned.
Another three years passed before Congress’s limits on PCB production took effect. Four decades later, though banned, PCBs live on, including in tiny amphipods swimming in some of the deepest waters of Earth’s biggest ocean.
* * *
PCBs, now endemic to environments everywhere, belong to a class of chemicals called (depending on the era) halocarbons, organohalogens, or halogenated organic compounds.
Organic, in this instance, refers not to foods raised without chemicals but to compounds made with carbon. Halo- (or halogen) signifies the presence of one or more of the halogen elements, the most familiar being chlorine, bromine, and fluorine. From these starting materials, chemists can make an array of compounds. But so can nature. To date, there are more than 5,000 so-called biogenic or naturally-occurring organohalogens.
Nature’s versions are forged in volcanoes or near deep-sea vents where temperatures run high, and chlorine and bromine are abundant. Organisms in all kingdoms can make halocarbons, though in minute quantities and typically for highly specialized purposes such as self-defense or signaling mates.
There are many pathways to making such complex molecules. The Iowa atmospheric chemist Scott Spak keeps a running tally of the “recipes” that might yield a PCB. While there are no known analogs in nature, one does get to wondering whether nature—at some point, somewhere on the planet or deep in the cosmos—could have served up the right mix of raw materials, in the right order and under the right conditions to allow for PCBs’ spontaneous formation. It is conceivable, Spak concedes, though purely hypothetical. Such a discovery, should it even occur, wouldn’t explain PCBs’ global dispersion, nor absolve what humans made with impunity. But it does hint at the complexity of Earth’s chemistry, and the humility with which we still endeavor to understand it.PCBs are familiar enough to be folded into nature’s systems and to confuse them.
Into intricate ecological and biological systems human industry introduced PCBs in extraordinary volumes, and in evolutionary terms, rapidly—over the span of three or four human generations, said Spak. But the problem isn’t so much that PCBs are “unnatural,” though one could make that argument. It is that they are molecules nature recognized, familiar enough to be folded into its systems and to confuse them.
Human biology has not adapted to their presence. Species far older than us, microbes mostly, have evolved over millennia to coexist with, and even to synthesize and break down, specific types of biogenic halocarbons. Some strains of bacteria are capable of disassembling PCBs. Other species, such as the Atlantic tomcod, bottom-feeders in the Hudson, have even developed a genetic variation that allows for survival in PCB-polluted waters, though their livers are also loaded with the chemicals.
But for humans, research tracking the health effects of industrial PCB exposures, Spak said, is tantamount to watching evolutionary consequences playing out in real time.
* * *
While sunlight (and some microorganisms) break down PCBs over time, they can be stunningly stable when stored in sediment, glaciers and other so-called “sinks” like the deep ocean. And because PCBs are lipophilic (or fat-loving), they can also accumulate in the fatty tissue of marine life, and in the bodies of mammals like us. Depending on the total load, some measure of PCBs can last a lifetime, or pass between generations through cord blood or milk.
The chemistry that enabled humankind to engineer elements into such durable molecules and enduring pollutants dates to the early 19th century, to a time when the natural world was the chemist’s muse. As chemistry industrialized, chemists were drawn by profit, and later, into geopolitics. In time, chemistry became a tool for nature’s mastery, and—both knowingly and inadvertently—an engine for its alteration.
At the center of this transformation is an elegant molecule called benzene. It is the same carbon-rich compound that lends gas stations their curiously evocative aroma, and PCBs their structural integrity.
A molecule of benzene is comprised of six carbon and six hydrogen atoms. Ask a chemist what benzene looks like, and she will draw a hexagon. It’s a schematic of how benzene’s six carbons circle themselves, as if linked hand in hand, into a ring. The benzene ring.“The number of organic compounds all at once increased to infinity.”
Benzene rings are also abundant in nature. They were present in Earth’s prebiotic soup, and they float in deep space. Many human hormones have benzene rings. And so do many human-engineered molecules.
Chemical engineers approach benzene as a building block from which to make thousands of useful products, including aspirin, the plastic lid to your takeaway coffee, and the Legos children leave strewn across floors the world over. Though, it should be noted that benzene is rarely made intentionally. Benzene is incidental to other industrial processes, such as refining oil into gasoline, processing coal into coke, or in the making of ethylene, another widely used chemical building block. Which makes benzene an industrial by-product and also a common industrial pollutant, especially following industrial accidents, as happened after Hurricane Harvey struck the plants along Texas’s Gulf coast.
All of which means the benzene ring is something of a paradox. When incorporated into certain molecules, it is essential to life. But in other configurations, slight tweaks in the composition and arrangement of atoms render benzene part of a toxic, possibly carcinogenic molecule. And when on its own, there is ample evidence that benzene causes cancer.
* * *
Until the middle of the 19th century, building on the benzene ring wasn’t possible because, though benzene had been isolated, its structure still eluded chemists. So significant was the “discovery” of benzene’s ring of carbons that in 1890, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the German Chemical Society threw a party—the Benzolfest! It was “a festival of magnificence perhaps unparalleled in the history of science,” wrote one commentator.
It was held at Berlin’s City Hall in Germany. The emperor was invited. Dignitaries came. All of the era’s most preeminent chemists gathered in their finest attire. Augustus Hoffman, a bearded and towering figure in the field of organic chemistry, waxed poetic about benzene and the chemist, Friedrich August Kekulé, who had “pluck[ed] the heart out of its mystery.”
The benzene tree, as he called it, was “thronged with blossoms,” its branches heavy with fruit. It was “a blaze of color,” and it gave off “an almost overwhelming fragrance,” a fitting metaphor given benzene’s signature scent.
To Hoffman, the benzene tree was a “giant.” It soared “into the clouds to where the eye cannot yet follow it.” Up the tree scaled “no dearth of industrious workers,” all “busily striving to collect the harvest,” he had said, referring to how entrepreneurial chemists were converting benzene chemistry into industrial products. “Keen climbers have already clambered up to the third or fourth branch,” Hoffman continued, some chemists “working at a dizzy[ing] height.”
With new insight into molecular configurations, chemists, starting around 1865, could better anticipate the steps required to synthesize new molecules. With the benzene ring, “the number of organic compounds all at once,” Hoffman had noted, “increased to infinity.”
Among those in the tree’s farthest reaches was Gustav Schultz, in attendance that night. In 1881, Schutlz, with the chemist Hermann Schmidt, had described the synthesis of a PCB. The pair published the new molecule in a premier German-language journal. And then, like DDT, also achieved during this era, PCBs were left to languish for decades on dust-cloaked shelves of obscure chemical libraries. Their discovery advanced chemical knowledge but was otherwise of little practical value.
* * *
Hoffman was born into the fast-changing world of 19th-century Europe. He grew up in parallel with organic chemistry, and ascended to its highest ranks. Unlike inorganic chemists’ fascination with Earth’s metals and minerals, the first organic chemists studied molecules from living organisms, which were principally comprised of carbon.
Benzene was first isolated from the by-products left after making “portable gas,” which was rendered from fish or whale blubber to fuel lamps. In time, chemists learned to derive benzene and other carbon-rich materials from coal tar instead, a project central to Hoffman’s work and that of his student, Charles Mansfield.
A lump of coal, while not alive, is evidence of life once lived. It is the long-sequestered remnants of ancient flora, from an epoch when trees could grow as tall, or taller, than the one Hoffman had conjured. Coal tar, though, is what remains after human extraction and use. Wherever cities gasified coal to light 19th-century streetlamps, or converted coal into hotter-burning coke to smelt metals, coal tar piled up as waste. Hoffman, curious of its composition, set out to characterize it.Rivers ran foul. Neighbors complained. Researchers took note.
But when organic chemistry adopted coal tar as its primary feedstock, it wedded itself to the residues of industrialization. And so the field became one step removed from the thrum of life that had first inspired it.
By the Benzolfest, organic chemistry was high technology, and the German Empire its Silicon Valley. The field was “the earliest pure science to have a massive impact on technology and on a national economy,” noted the historian Alan Rocke. Germany’s prowess in chemical manufacturing would embolden its nationalistic ambitions. But the war such nationalism inspired would seed the downfall of the German chemical empire, and the rise of a new kind of chemical industry on American soil.
* * *
The original chemical products plucked from the benzene tree had a very specific application: They were textile dyes, what turns humdrum fabrics into every hue imaginable. The first colorfast dye synthesized from coal tar had been an accident. A failed attempt by one of Hoffman’s students to make quinine—a hard-to-source malarial drug derived from the South American fever bark tree—led to the discovery in 1856 of a dye that could permanently stain silk a rich, red-purple mauve.
Hoffman was based in England, and it was his English student William Perkin who happened into the colorant. Perkin left the lab against Hoffman’s counsel to build a dye-works instead. His factory marked the first attempt to do organic chemistry at scale, wrote Simon Garfield in his history of this world-changing invention. Eventually, after multiple failed attempts, Perkin developed the multi-stepped process, and proceeded to the equally difficult task of convincing an established, but reluctant, textile industry to adopt his industrial dye.
In time, Garfield noted, a new class of chemists engineered the radiant color palette of Victorian fashion from the dregs of Europe’s Industrial Revolution. Dye-works sprouted across Europe, clustering along Germany and Switzerland’s swift rivers. In time, these ran foul—discolored and odorous. Neighbors complained. Researchers took note. Governments acted, but the coal-tar industry bloomed all the same.
By the close of the 19th century, German dyestuffs dominated the world market, though the first effects of acute exposures were already evident among the earliest generations of dye workers. By 1897, the term chloracne appeared in the German literature to describe a condition unique to chemical workers, “an industrial leprosy,” where the skin is pocked with painful, disfiguring lesions. Not long after, medicine documented new “aniline (dye) tumors” and “dye-workers cancer.” In time, chemists realized benzene, too, was more hazardous in factory quantities than in those used in a laboratory.Ramp up peacetime production of coal-tar chemicals and a fleet of war-ready factories would be lying in wait.
And yet, coal-tar chemistry flourished, spreading in multiple directions at once. Chemical innovation led to new dyes, and also to new drugs like aspirin, a synthetic version of a molecule once sourced from willow bark. New classes of pharmaceuticals followed. In time, coal-tar drugs transformed health care.
But coal-tar drugs and coal-tar chemicals thereafter diverged, at least in the popular imagination and in the eyes of states trying to manage these burgeoning technologies. To this day, and despite recent reforms to U.S. policy, drugs and industrial chemicals fall under the purview of separate laws administered by separate agencies. And they are held to separate standards of safety. Forgotten to history are their common origins and chemical ancestry.
Less than a century after the Benzolfest, scientists, led by Theo Colborn, synthesized the growing body of ecological research into a disquieting discovery. At trace levels of exposure, levels lower than workers’ acute exposures and equivalent to dosed drugs, many of these new classes of organic chemicals (including PCBs) could mimic, block, or disrupt the work of hormones, the biochemical signals that coordinate multicellular life.
* * *
Though Perkin missed the mark, making mauve instead, it was no accident that an English chemist sought a synthetic route to quinine. Malarial drugs were essential to colonial expansion into the tropics, one example of how organic chemicals are influenced by prevailing geopolitics and pressed to do the work of empire.
By the second decade of the 20th century, organic chemicals were moved to the front lines of global conflict. Mustard gas, picric acid, and TNT—all organic molecules—made for unimaginably destructive weapons. After Versailles, even peacetime users of organic chemicals were hailed as patriots and power brokers. Germany paid reparations with dyes, while the United States seized German chemical patents and industrial-plant designs as the spoils of war.
Before the Great War, few U.S. firms had ventured into organic chemicals. Only after fighting began, and the British embargo blocked import of German chemicals, did American companies leap into the unknown of organic chemicals production.
“Americans keenly felt their dependence on German chemicals,” wrote the industrial historian Kathryn Steen. Mastering how to make them domestically was motivated “partly because of the[se] shortages,” she added, but “primarily because of what [the chemicals] represented to Americans—the seemingly inferior industrial and scientific abilities relative to the enemy and rival.”
After the war, growing the nation’s capacity to manufacture chemicals became a national project. The founder of Hooker Chemical (later responsible for Love Canal, the nation’s first Superfund site) argued this point with regard to chlorine (a gruesome war gas). The same case was made for coal-tar chemicals in 1917 by John F. Queeny, the founder of Monsanto Chemical—the company that two decades later would take PCBs global. Factories that made drugs and dyes from coal, Queeny argued, could easily make the materials required by modern warfare. Ramp up peacetime production of coal-tar chemicals and a fleet of war-ready factories would be lying in wait. It would mark “the declaration of American chemical independence,” Queeny said.
For the general public, though, the new coal-tar chemicals were a harder sell.
Coal-tar chemicals smacked of artifice and, in their use as chemical weapons, seemed abhorrent, not the patriots industrialists had painted them to be. Chemistry had a postwar public-relations problem.
In the same editorial where Queeny equated national security with a robust chemical industry, he also pictured coal-tar chemistry as a thickly crowned tree. Like those that chart ancestry, Queeny’s tree arranged chemical products by family and parentage.
Semet-Solvay widely distributed a similar image. Their “coal products tree” rooted the company’s offerings in the nation’s bituminous coal beds. Along boughs of ammonia, tar, and benzene bloomed hundreds of products—Saccharin! Explosives! Mothballs! Perfume!—all promising mastery over nature’s unyielding cycles, its wild swarms and infestations, its off-putting odors and inconvenient secretions.
The collective conscience still carried residues of the real and symbolic horrors of chemical warfare, even at the height of the roaring twenties. Chemistry had a spectral presence, and it was evident in popular sentiment and the era’s literature. All Quiet on the Western Front, A Farewell to Arms, and Goodbye to All That were postmortems on chemical warfare. All three were published (or translated) in 1929, the same year PCB production began far from the battlefields of Western Europe in Anniston, Alabama, on the lush, southern limits of Appalachia’s rolling hills.
Anniston was a planned, industrial utopia. But in reality, it was a segregated southern city populated by pig-iron and pipe foundries. PCBs were first made by Anniston’s Federal Phosphorus Company, in a plant that belonged to the son of a Confederate solider, a charismatic entrepreneur and a champion of the South’s revival.
Theodore Swann had gotten his start selling locomotives and later electricity. During World War I, he managed a munitions plant in Anniston, but then founded a factory to refine manganese for the steel industry, and when that failed, phosphorous, which is how Swann finally came into his fortune. His electric furnaces captured a pure form of phosphoric acid, which was sold to make fertilizer, detergent, baking soda and even soda pop.
Swann wasn’t a chemist, but a “boom man in a boomtown,” as one biographer put it, always looking for the next thing. And in the mid-1920s, what was on the rise were cars, American crude, and by extension organic chemicals. The success of these ascendant industries depended on better chemical technologies to make better fuels and better car parts. And Swann had seen it coming.
In the mid-1920s, at the invitation of an oil company, Indian Refining (later known as Texaco), he agreed to manufacture a benzene-based chemical called diphenyl (or biphenyl, in today’s parlance). Indian Refining needed a regular supply of diphenyl, a heat transfer fluid, to improve its oil-refining process. Except only one company made diphenyl, Eastman Kodak, and it was only available in small batches at the prohibitive price of $40 per pound.
The structure of diphenyl was simple: just two fused rings of benzene. But it required an entirely different chemistry, and experience and expertise that were in short supply at the time.Diphenyl was a “magic fluid” that brought the nation to the brink of a new chemical age.
As Spears described in Baptized in PCBs, Swann assigned a team to the difficult (and hazardous) task, and issued them a deadline. Development proceeded by trial and error, with error sometimes resulting in explosions, including one that took off a wall and showered Swann’s men with fire, glass, benzene, and other shrapnel.
They eventually mastered diphenyl, a “magic fluid” that brought the nation to the brink of a new chemical age. Not long after, Swann’s chemists scaled another process to add chlorine onto the diphenyl backbone, creating a molecule so stable, it would travel the globe and accumulate in places surely unfathomable to Swann. Swann had financed the conversion of benzene into biphenyl, and now biphenyl into PCBs. The Anniston Works would soon produce 3,000 pounds of PCBs per day.
Production levels climbed higher by the year, as PCBs were put to the project of nation-building. They erected the bases and surveillance equipment that protected the new world order, while at home, PCBs were built into the schools, offices, and factories constructed to accommodate the postwar boom. PCBs would transform U.S. industry in a matter of decades and global ecology before the century was out.
* * *
In the United States, the first batches of PCBs, made at the close of the 1920s, likely left Anniston for Pittsburgh, home of H.H. Robertson Company. Robertson made prefabricated metal siding and roofing from which to erect factories, smelters, refineries and chemical works. The company, like Indian Refining before them, had asked for technical assistance. They needed a new protective coating for their metal sheeting, one that could prevent erosion and the spread of fire better than Halowaxes, or chlorinated naphthalene, one of the earliest classes of industrial halocarbons produced in the United States.
PCBs were unusually durable and durably useful. They were heat-resistant, non-conductive, and excellent as a weatherproof and fireproof coating. And because they were a value-added waste product, PCBs were economically viable.
Flame-resistant factory parts may seem like an insignificant side note, but Robertson’s Protected Metals, later called Galbestos, were instrumental in growing the nation’s manufacturing sector in size and scale. Factories were changing. Small, clustered, brick structures gave way to multistory, steel Goliaths. And these needed to withstand the elements, and to contain the fire and explosion risks that went along with the 20th century’s new methods for transforming nature’s resources into the mass-made materials of modern societies.The flowering of American petrochemistry was at the time a “uniquely American phenomenon.”
Four days after the stock-market crash of 1929, Swann’s firm filed a patent for PCB-laced transformer oils. Westinghouse and GE, like Robertson, would soon find PCBs indispensable, wrote Spears.
But despite these early successes, problems were mounting in Anniston. Within the first years of PCB production, those handling PCBs developed the same chloracne and other debilitating symptoms as dye workers a generation earlier. Three workers at Halowax who handled PCBs died from acute yellow atrophy of the liver (extreme jaundice), fatalities that were studied, but ultimately cast aside by company officials.
And though Swann’s company had weathered the worst years of the Depression, it wouldn’t survive the decade. Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration had issued economic directives that, as Swann put it, leveled southern industry like Sherman’s March to the Sea. And he had been a profligate spender—living high in the Birmingham hills. But with shifting costs, and loans coming due, Swann went under. His rise to fortune and influence had been fast and somewhat famed. (He had even been profiled in Forbes.) His decline was equally precipitous. Swann sunk into debt, losing his mansion, and all claims to his many factories and technologies.
Queeny’s coal-tar drug company, Monsanto, was also flush from lucrative contracts with Coca-Cola, who bought their caffeine, vanillin, and saccharin. Monsanto took over PCB production in 1935, securing government contracts, growing sales through World War II, and shielding all along the suite of chemicals from regulation until the mid-1970s.
Chemical production in these intervening years soared, owning to the fact that U.S. firms switched their substrate from coal tar to the by-products of the new, advanced crude refineries. In the 1950s, Socony-Vacuum (later ExxonMobil) published the petroleum tree, emblematic of the flowering of American petrochemistry, at the time a “uniquely American phenomenon,” as industrialist Peter Spitz put it.Chemistry, it seemed, had freed humanity from nature altogether.
Two years later, in 1959, Goodrich-Gulf published the rubber tree, as symbolic to this era as Hoffman’s tree had been in his time. Advances in chemical engineering had obviated the need for natural latex, making rubber from oil rather than rubber trees. Drugs, sweeteners, flavorings, fertilizers, fabrics, and furnishings now all had synthetic equivalents. Chemistry, it seemed, had freed humanity from nature altogether.
When chemical trees finally disappeared from popular culture, what was lost was any connection of organic chemicals to their fossil-fuel roots, and of greater significance, to their molecular basis in carbon and the chemistry of life.
* * *
If you bore into the fat-rich bark of a thick-trunked tree, you’ll likely find PCBs, same as you’d find in deep-ocean amphipods, which makes trees like shrimp, and shrimp like us. PCBs are thought to be present in detectable levels in every person on the planet. Though everywhere, the implications are distributed unevenly. PCBs can concentrate, creating hotspots, including in Anniston and other factory towns and regions of the Arctic and subarctic, with significant implications for the indigenous communities living there.
Despite national and international curbs on their production, PCBs now congregate in the deep ocean, raising new concerns. In some areas of the Mariana, PCB levels registered 50 times higher than those found in crabs living in surface waters near heavy industry in China.
By the time the international community stepped in to end global PCB production, well over 1 million metric tons (about 3 billion pounds) had been manufactured worldwide. The 2001 UN Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants that resulted from these negotiations, but which the United States has yet to ratify, initially named DDT, PCBs, and 10 other chemicals (or classes of chemicals), all based on benzene.
“The challenge moving forward is to determine the physiological consequences of such contamination and understand knock-on effects on ecosystem function,” Jamieson and his colleagues concluded in the pages of Nature Ecology and Evolution. Except human activity may be altering the chemistry of the deep before we have had the chance to document it.Industry develops and retracts chemical classes in waves without seeming to absorb the larger lesson.
The problem is not limited to PCBs, but extends to the larger family of organohalogens to which they belong. In the early 1970s, PCBs were replaced by other organohalogens, one being polybrominated biphenyls, or PBBs, molecules similar to PCBs, but made with bromine instead of chlorine. Soon after their introduction, PBBs got into cattle feed, poisoning the food supply and the people of Michigan, and saddling the state with a long-lived legacy. PBDEs, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, followed as yet another alternative. These were used as flame retardants for two decades before a subsequent generation of Swedish scientists charted rising levels in breast milk.
Besides PCBs, amphipods living in the Mariana also harbor PBDEs, though the most prevalent commercial mixtures have been phased out of U.S. production and named to the UN Stockholm Convention as well.
The deep now archives nearly a century of chemical innovation, and documents the rise and fall of chemical classes, which industry develops and retracts in waves without seeming to absorb the larger lesson.
* * *
There are those who want a bright line to divide what’s natural from what isn’t as a means to make clear what’s safe. But with their origins in Earth’s deep carbon, and their enduring presence in life forms everywhere, such distinctions are murky at best. And yet, PCBs are part of a post-natural state in which industrial chemistry and ecology have become one and the same.
“Nature,” the organic chemist Pat Costner reminded me, “is a chemist, too” and the world its roiling, bubbling, reactive laboratory. Science has only begun to grapple with the complexity of our overlapping chemistries. Costner trained in organic chemistry at the peak of the chemical age. She took her first job as a bench chemist with Shell Oil in the 1960s, though she didn’t stay long. She turned her attention to organic pollution, particularly the chemical by-products industry never intended to make but released into nature anyway.“We have been so clever at playing with atoms and molecules without ever thinking about what that they do once they are out.”
Her specialty became the family of benzene-based compounds called dioxins, perhaps the most poisonous products of the benzene tree. Some PCBs, she reminded me, are dioxin-like in their toxicity profile. And like dioxins, PCBs can also be inadvertent by-products, made incidentally during the manufacture of titanium dioxide, for example, or a shade of yellow organic inks and dyesreminiscent of the letters that spell out Spam. Try though we may, control over chemistries this complex is something of a chimera.
“We have been so clever at learning to play with atoms and molecules without ever thinking about what that they do once they are out,” she told me. “Put a complex molecule into the environment,” said Costner, “and it is going to undergo any number of transitions in hard-to-predict ways.”
The same is true when human-made molecules interact with the exquisite biochemistry of our bodies.
As the biologist Sandra Steingraber explains, the organs of the human system are designed to “shuttle around, break apart, recycle, and reconstruct carbon-containing molecules,” work orchestrated by enzymes and hormones. If carbon molecules come with add-ons like chlorine and bromine, the chemical makeup can influence whether the body stores the molecules, metabolizes them, renders them benign, or makes them inherently more dangerous.
But regulating organic chemicals for their biological activity has been political and controversial because carbon is not just the basis of our biology, but also deeply embedded in our economy.
One hundred and fifty years ago, when Hoffman and his contemporaries gathered to celebrate benzene, humanity’s collective relationship to carbon and nature had already begun to shift. Chemistry, which once mimicked nature’s molecules, had begun to manipulate them. All the more striking, then, is Hoffman’s fantastical tree. Just two years before his death, he rooted chemistry to the Earth. However high chemists might climb, however much industry might harvest, chemistry was grounded in the laws of nature. What goes around comes around. Nature travels in cycles.
But those in attendance that cold March eve, a decade before the new century dawned, could not have known that the branch of chemistry they honored—founded to study living matter!—would spawn an industry so prolific as to irreparably alter the chemistry of life itself.
The chemical innovations of Hoffman’s era would get swept into global conflict—and the American impulse toward maximum and unfettered production—casting PCBs and other fruits of the benzene tree far and wide, into the ocean deep and possibly the depths of time.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/benzene-tree-organic-compounds/530655/
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Canada Proposes Removing 83 Substances From NDSL Due To Potential Risk
Oct 5, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
Canada proposed deleting 83 substances from its Non-Domestic Substances List (NDSL) because of findings that they could pose health or environmental risks.
The NDSL is an inventory of substances not on the Domestic Substances List (DSL) of chemicals in active commerce in Canada, but are in commercial use internationally. Substances on the DSL do not require notification unless they are subject to a significant new activity (Snac) notice. Substances on the NDSL are subject to new substance notification, but with lesser requirements than for other new chemicals.
Up until now the NDSL has been updated twice a year to add substances listed:on the US Chemical Substances Inventory and not subject to risk management in the US or Canada; oras "of concern" under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants; oron the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade.
Environment and Climate Change Canada reviewed substances on the NDSL and found that 83 should be removed "based on risk management measures taken in Canada, regulatory flags on the TSCA Chemical Substances Inventory or concerns raised under the Stockholm or Rotterdam conventions".
The agency plans to undertake this review annually.
The proposals were published in a notice in the Canada Gazette on 23 September. The government will accept comments, including notice that a substance is currently on the Canadian marketplace, until 10 November.
"Comments will be taken into consideration during the development of the final Order and identified stakeholders with current business interests in these chemicals (that is to say current importers or manufacturers) will be engaged to facilitate a transition to the new reporting requirements," the notice said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/59702/canada-proposes-removing-83-substances-from-ndsl-due-to-potential-risk
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Draft EU Endocrine Disruptor Pesticide Ban Exterminated
Oct 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
Germany's Bayer AG, Dow AgroSciences, Syngenta and other chemical companies are breathing a sigh of relief after the European Parliament vetoed a draft EU regulation Oct. 4 that could have banned up to 70 pesticides with endocrine disrupting properties.
Endocrine disruptors mimic, block or alter or hormone functions that can shape growth and development.
The veto pleased companies and environmental groups alike. Companies had faulted the draft regulation as a too-blunt instrument that would have led to unjustified pesticide bans, while environmental groups said loopholes in the draft regulation would have allowed continued use of endocrine-disrupting pesticides.
The draft would have set criteria for identifying endocrine disrupting substances in pesticides. The criteria are needed to implement the EU Pesticides Regulation ((EC) No 1107/2009) prohibiting the use of proven endocrine disruptors as pesticides.
European Parliament lawmakers, sitting in Strasbourg, France, voted 389 to 235, with 70 abstentions, to reject the proposal, concluding it would have still allowed a number of pesticides with endocrine disrupting properties as long as those properties only affected the organisms targeted by the pesticide and similar non-vertebrate organisms.
According to the objection adopted by lawmakers, this went too far and would “effectively create a derogation” compared to the intention of the EU Pesticides Regulation to largely outlaw endocrine disruptors.
The effect of Parliament's veto is to send the draft regulation back to the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, which said in an Oct. 4 statement that it would “now need to reflect on next steps to take.”
Veto Lauded by Groups
Graeme Taylor, director of public affairs for the European Crop Protection Association, told Bloomberg BNA Oct. 4 that “probably 60 to 70” pesticides might have been banned in the EU under the vetoed draft regulation.
Another industry official, Claudia Karsten, spokeswoman for Germany's Bayer AG, told Bloomberg BNA Oct. 4 the regulation would have been “unworkable, impractical, and would have impacted negatively on the competitiveness of European farming, without providing any increase in protection for health and the environment.”Health and environmental advocates lauded the veto because they believed the draft regulation did not target enough compounds.
Génon K. Jensen, executive director of advocacy group the Health & Environment Alliance, said in an Oct. 4 statement that the European Parliament had shown “remarkable clear-sightedness” in vetoing a proposed regulation “that fails to identify the numerous toxic substances that people are exposed to.”
Environmental lawyers ClientEarth said in a statement Oct. 4 that endocrine disruptors “interfere with human hormones and may cause cancer, infertility or impaired brain development,” and the European Parliament had been right to reject draft criteria that “would have only benefited the pesticides industry.”
Long-Running Process
Bayer, Dow AgroSciences and Syngenta are among the largest suppliers of pesticides in the EU. Dow EU government affairs and science policy leader Filip Cnudde declined to comment to Bloomberg BNA Oct. 4 on the European Parliament vote and referred queries to the European Crop Protection Association.
The parliament's veto of the draft regulation is the latest step in a long process to establish criteria to formally identify endocrine disrupting pesticides. Under the Pesticides Regulation, the criteria should have been proposed by December 2013. The European Commission Oct. 4 did not give an indication of when redrafted criteria might be published.
In the absence of criteria to identify endocrine disruptors in pesticides, certain carcinogenic and reprotoxic substances are by default considered to be endocrine disruptors for the purposes of the EU Pesticides Regulation.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=121717396&vname=dennotallissues&fn=121717396&jd=121717396
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Echa Proposes Free SME Access To REACH Registration Data
Oct 5, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
Echa proposes to grant small and medium sized businesses conditional free access to REACH data and joint submissions to reduce the burden of data sharing negotiations for the 2018 registration deadline.
In a recent paper seen by Chemical Watch, the agency calls for the REACH Directors’ Contact Group (DCG) to endorse the proposal at its meeting later this month.
The DCG is an informal group of directors from the European Commission, Echa and industry associations. It was set up to respond to issues of concerns arising from companies' REACH registration obligations.
Following the DCG endorsement, the paper says, all parties should then "promote this voluntary approach and spread existing information on negotiations and dispute procedure among existing or future registrants that may be interacting or about to interact with SMEs in the context of their Siefs [substance information exchange fora]".
In the paper, the agency says industry could make a "major contribution" if the letter of access for the data and the token to join the joint submission would be made available for SMEs for free "in certain cases".
This could be done when a registration already exists and data is submitted to Echa, the paper says. This approach would avoid any negotiation between parties and save costs. Free access would "reduce uncertainty on the decision to register for SMEs", the paper adds.
It does however say the following conditions could be imposed:the new registrant presents a self-declaration that it complies with the definition of an SME;SMEs agrees with the classification in the lead dossier and the safety data sheet, and therefore to implement and communicate the corresponding risk management measures;SMEs would need to agree to waive their right to request a detailed cost itemisation and a reimbursement scheme;the SME should be in a position to confirm that they have the same substance and that it does not possess any additional information relevant for the registration dossier; andthe access to free data only applies to existing data for the 2018 deadline, and is without prejudice to sharing costs for new data, for example after substance evaluation.
The paper adds that it is important to ensure SMEs have "easy access" to all available support material and, if necessary, to the dispute mechanism. "In order to achieve that, all parties should engage in as many channels as possible to disseminate information on data and cost sharing." Existing registrants and their consortia or associations could play a role in informing the SME wanting access on the available information, it says.SME study
Echa’s proposals are based on suggestions from a commissioned study, conducted by consulting firm RPA, on SMEs and the REACH 2018 deadline. It says that the key issue for many SMEs is the cost of registration and, in particular, the cost of the letters of access and participating in Siefs.
The UK’s Chemical Business Association (CBA) and the European Association of Chemical Distributors (Fecc) raised the idea of free access at a joint DG Environment, DG Enterprise and Industry, and Echa conference in December 2013 on SMEs and the 2018 deadline.
This month the CBA wrote to the UK environment ministry to "strongly urge" it to support the proposal at the next meeting of the competent authorities for REACH and Classification Labelling and Packaging (CLP) in mid-November.
In September last year, European chemical industry council Cefic said that in the run up to the 2018 REACH registration deadline, clear and comprehensive guidance on data sharing can be "critical" for legal clarity. A year ago, the heads of Echa and European SME trade body Ueapme met to discuss how to help members meet the 2018 REACH registration deadline.
https://chemicalwatch.com/59745/echa-proposes-free-sme-access-to-reach-registration-data
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Bringing Sanity Back To Europe’s Glyphosate Debate
Oct 5, 2017 | Euractiv
By Pieter Cleppe.
For glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world’s most widely used weed killer, 6 Novemberwill be a date with destiny, writes Pieter Cleppe.
Pieter Cleppe is the head of the Brussels office of Open Europe.
EU member states, which are already meeting on 5 October about this, are expected to decide on whether to extend its market authorisation for another ten years. The last time the issue was tabled by the European Commission – in the summer of 2016 – France and Germany abstained and forced the EC to merely extend the licence until the end of 2017. There has been a war of words between policymakers, scientists, and environmental activists raging ever since.
The process has gotten no less bumpy in the run-up to the vote, after new French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot said Paris will not just abstain but outright vote against glyphosate, although recently it has said it is open to phasing it out.
Driven by fears it may be harmful to consumers, Hulot’s stance has thrown farmers into a tizzy. The French Association of Wheat Producers (AGPB) has estimated that a ban on glyphosate would add €900m per year in extra costs to the French cereals industry.
A separate study from Ipsos went even further, putting damages at a whopping €2bn when considering the costs for both cereals farmers and winemakers. But is glyphosate actually harmful, or is France on the verge of causing a self-inflicted, multi-billion-euro faux pas for no good reason?
If the science community were a democracy, there would be little cause to question the herbicide’s safety record. On 7 September, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), a scientific review body of the European Union, became the latest regulatory body to conclude that there is no evidence of glyphosate having a negative effect on the human hormonal system.
Earlier this year, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) determined the substance is not carcinogenic, as did the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a 2016 study. In addition to these two reports, almost a dozen national regulatory agencies – including Germany’s BfR and Canada’s PMRA – reached similar conclusions.
But these collective voices were drowned out by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s cancer body. IARC provided activists with material justification for something they had long suspected: that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.
Ever since, the ensuing debate has fractured the international community, mixed politics and science, sparked court cases, and created an atmosphere so toxic that rational discussion has been rendered practically impossible.
EFSA was one of the first groups to counter IARC, accusing it in 2015 of ignoring a vast number of scientific studies that exonerated glyphosate while providing undue weight to a handful of papers that claimed otherwise.
Bernhard Url, the director of EFSA, said his colleagues at the WHO were contributing to “the Facebook age of science” at a hearing in the European Parliament, stating: “You have a scientific assessment, you put it in Facebook and you count how many people like it. For us, this is no way forward.”
Url’s quip opened a war of words that has been raging ever since. Another tiff centred on the scientist leading the WHO review, who confessed in a California court case that he knew of data clearing glyphosate of carcinogenic potential but neglected to include it in IARC’s Monograph.
On top of that, a prominent IARC scientist, Christopher Portier, appeared to be employed by the Environmental Defense Fund, an NGO with historic involvement in the anti-pesticides campaign. Out of the nearly 1,000 substances IARC has so far evaluated, only one has been deemed not to be a carcinogen; the controversy over glyphosate has only compounded fears that the body’s methods are somehow flawed.
It’s exposure, stupid
The bone of contention between the two camps revolves around exposure. For regulatory agencies, glyphosate safety should be evaluated in relation to the doses a normal person is expected to encounter in real-world conditions.
The daily maximum dose varies, but the EPA puts it at 1.75 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. To put that into perspective, consider the cereal brand Cheerios, which had the highest level of glyphosate out of any product tested by activist group “Food Democracy Now!”. To cause any harm, a 175-pound adult would have to eat more than 1,270 servings of the cereal a day to max out the daily acceptable intake. And a child of half that weight would have to eat more than 635 servings.
However, for IARC, Nicolas Hulot, and others, the mere fact that there is some risk, irrespective of exposure, is reason enough to outright ban the substance. For them, the reigning factor is the so-called precautionary principle.
The principle states that if there is no scientific consensus on a substance’s effects on the human body, that chemical should be banned on suspicion alone. Acting on this impulse, campaigners have managed to obtain 1.3 million signatures against glyphosate.
The precautionary principle has some very obvious flaws. We can never be entirely sure of a chemical’s effects on the human body; had this principle been applied in the 1950s, we may well never have known the benefits of aspirin.
It would simply never have been authorised today, according to Peter McNaughton, Sheild professor of pharmacology at the University of Cambridge. As so often happens, the loudest voices taking part in the glyphosate debate have almost no scientific background whatsoever.
This is exactly what Bernard Url warned against: trying to settle what’s harmful and what’s not by paying heed to petitions, rather than by trusting scientific experts. If the economic and even environmental cost of banning glyphosate is easy to determine, but its health risks are rebuffed by all regulatory agencies in the world, isn’t it more rational to extend market authorization?
As risky as it may be for politicians to completely outsource their decision-making power to scientific experts, it’s far worse for them to solely rely on public opinion or online petitions.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/opinion/thursbringing-sanity-back-to-europes-glyphosate-debate/
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Appeals Court Cancels Arguments On Second LNG Challenge
Oct 5, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Darius Dixon
A three-judge federal appeals panel today canceled oral arguments on a lawsuit from the Sierra Club challenging the Energy Department’s approval of the Cove Point liquefied natural gas export application.
“The court concludes, on its own motion, that oral argument will not assist the court in this case,” according to an order agreed to by D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judges David Tatel, Harry Edwards and David Sentelle.
The oral arguments had been scheduled for Oct. 18.
Environmentalists said that the agency didn't properly estimate how the gas shipments might increase prices domestically, potentially boost coal use in the power system or increase greenhouse emissions. DOE had defended itself by arguing that producing the numbers Sierra Club is seeking would be so speculative as to be meaningless.
The cancellation isn’t a big surprise after the Sierra Club lost a similar lawsuit against the agency over its approval Freeport’s LNG export application in August, Sierra Club v. DOE, 15-1489. The group did not appeal the decision, unanimously opted to defer to DOE’s “reasoned explanation as to why it believed the indirect effects pertaining to increased gas production were not reasonably foreseeable.”
Sentellle, a senior circuit judge, is on both cases.
WHAT’S NEXT: Now that the judges intend to make a decision on the case, Sierra Club v. DOE, 16-1186, without having oral arguments, a decision may be released in the next few weeks.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard/2
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Energy Industry ‘Very, Very Close’ to Voluntary Methane Emissions Reduction Program, Says Shell Exec
Oct 5, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jeremiah Shelor
The American Petroleum Institute is getting "very, very close" to formally adopting a voluntary program to curb methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, Royal Dutch Shell plc's Greg Guidry, executive vice president of unconventionals, said this week.
Speaking at the North American Gas Forum in Washington, DC, on Monday Guidry said the "very comprehensive program" would go into effect in January. "It's focused on the three primary sources of fugitive emissions based on all of the studies through" the Environmental Defense Fund, the University of Texas at Austin and others.
Guidry’s announcement preceded that of the Bureau of Land Management, which on said it plans to suspend the Obama administration's venting and flaring rule for oil and gas producers. He told the audience that the industry can't rely on future administrations to have the same regulatory mindset.
"The idea is that we demonstrate self-control and self-improvement over the next few years," he said. "Who knows what administration is going to be next? But if we do not demonstrate stewardship during that period of time, I dare say we are not going to like the subsequent time period."
Natural gas has reached a "moment of truth" amid the global transition to a lower carbon energy future, and controlling methane emissions is one of the steps the industry needs to take to be proactive in claiming its place as part of the climate solution, Guidry said.
As the world looks to continue cutting greenhouse gas emissions "we could easily say that we have the solution," he said, "so why is it as an industry we're still talking about building a natural gas bridge to renewables in the power sector and the golden age of gas, when it seems just a few years ago that seemed like a foregone conclusion? It hasn't happened exactly the way we'd hoped.
"...The debate over the future energy system has intensified" with some "arguing in favor of using other sources of energy instead of gas, and in many cases pragmatism has been replaced by idealism. This is where the moment of truth for gas comes in. Things have changed, and so we must ensure that we don't let this incredible opportunity pass us by."
Guidry identified four key steps for the industry to take. First, work with governments to encourage "smart policies and regulatory frameworks" to cut emissions, including accelerating coal-to-gas switching, promoting energy efficiency and adopting "widespread use of carbon capture storage" technology.
Second, the industry must further innovate and cut costs in order to ensure it remains competitive with cheap coal and renewables.
"As an industry, we're fully capable of tackling the cost reduction challenge without ever compromising safety and our environmental performance, and as we tackle the cost challenge we must work with our customers to ensure that structurally lower costs translate into structurally competitive pricing," Guidry said. "This will instill confidence in the market that a choice for gas is a resilient choice through all price cycles."
Third, the industry must manage its environmental footprint, "particularly methane emissions." Even factoring in methane emissions, burning natural gas still results in around 50% fewer equivalent emissions compared to coal, Guidry said.
"But we are at risk of undermining the credibility of the role of gas in the future energy mix if we allow methane to be emitted across that value chain," he said. "It is the responsibility of every company in the industry to do their part -- detect emissions, repair them and reduce venting. As an industry, we need to take control of this issue."
With those first three issues in order, the industry can then "confidently target demand growth" across the globe. "As an industry we can unlock far more demand by investing in import and distribution infrastructure, serving new customers and playing a key role in addressing energy poverty.”
Power demand is "only one piece of the pie," with opportunities for natural gas in other sectors of the global economy "where a significant portion” of energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide occur. “That's in transport, that's in building, and that's in heavy industries, particularly high-temperature industries -- cement, steel, and so on.
"Today electricity only meets around 20% of global demand. With a gradual transition toward a lower carbon energy system by 2050, electricity could take 30% of the market share...Ultimately we think electricity could take up around 50% of final consumption" near the end of the century, with global energy demand expected to double by that time.
"That's a big market to play for in terms of natural gas," he said.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/111960-energy-industry-very-very-close-to-voluntary-methane-emissions-reduction-program-says-shell-exec
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Interior Wants to Freeze Obama-era Methane Limits
Oct 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy and David Schultz
The Interior Department wants to temporarily stop enforcing an Obama-era rule that limited methane emissions from oil and gas drillers operating on federal lands.
The proposal from the department's Bureau of Land Management would delay certain requirements of the rule, which sought to reduce leaking, venting, and flaring of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The proposed delay comes as the Trump administration is weighing whether to repeal the rule outright.
Under the proposal, scheduled to be published Oct. 5 in the Federal Register, the Bureau would suspend some requirements until Jan. 17, 2019. The methane rule at issue became effective Jan. 17, 2017, though many provisions weren't set to begin until Jan. 17, 2018.
The Bureau said the pause in enforcement aims to avoid “imposing temporary or permanent compliance costs on operators for requirements that may be rescinded or significantly revised in the near future.“ It also cites executive orders from President Donald Trump that “necessitate a review” of the rule, including one compelling agencies to reduce the costs of complying with federal regulations.
“It doesn't make sense to have companies comply with a rule that will be substantially changed in the near future,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, told Bloomberg BNA. “The administration is going through the proper rulemaking process to correct this unlawful rule, but that process takes time.”
The Western Energy Alliance and other energy industry representatives are challenging the rule through a lawsuit in a Wyoming-based federal court.
Not Expedited
The Bureau's current proposal must go through the standard public comment period, and before it can finalize the proposal, the Bureau must analyze and respond to all of those comments.
Earlier this year, the EPA attempted to enact a 90-day delay on a similar methane regulation without going through that process, but that delay was overturned by a federal appeals court in Clean Air Council v. Pruitt.
Republican lawmakers attempted to overturn the Bureau's rule earlier this year using an expedited legislative process. But they fell one vote short after three Republican senators crossed party lines to vote the measure down.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=121717389&vname=dennotallissues&fn=121717389&jd=121717389
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Explosion Rocks Eastman Chemical Plant In Tenn.
Oct 4, 2017 | Chem.Info
By Meagan Parrish
An explosion at an Eastman Chemical plant in Kingsport, Tenn. released large plumes of black smoke on Wednesday morning.
According to CBS News, there were no injuries reported with the accident. But workers and some nearby residents were temporarily asked to shelter in place as a precaution.
The Eastman facility is located at a manufacturing complex north of Knoxville and on the border with Virginia.
According to Eastman, a “process upset” near a part of the plant that deals with coal gasification caused the “loud noise and visible plume.”
On Tuesday, Eastman announced that it would be conducting a series of in-plant warning system tests at the Kingsport facility this week. The company reported that nearby residents may hear alarms going off, through Wednesday afternoon.
Eastman’s Kingsport manufacturing site was founded in 1920 and produces chemicals and other products used in paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals and more.
https://www.chem.info/news/2017/10/explosion-rocks-eastman-chemical-plant-tenn
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Trump Picks Amtrak Critic For Board
Oct 5, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Camille von Kaenel and Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
President Trump intends to nominate former Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), who voted against increasing funding for Amtrak, to be a member of the rail service's board for a term of five years.
Westmoreland served in Congress from 2005 to January 2017 and was on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials.
As one of the most conservative members of the House, he was a deficit hawk who opposed earmarks and heavy spending. For example, on June 13, 2006, he voted against an amendment that would have increased funding for Amtrak by $214 million.
Before politics, he ran a construction business. He now heads his own consulting firm, Westmoreland Strategies LLC.
President Obama nominated most of the people currently on Amtrak's board. Derek Kan left to join Trump's Transportation Department as undersecretary for policy.Infrastructure hearing
Separately, Amtrak co-CEO Charles Moorman told lawmakers yesterday the environmental red tape surrounding the Hudson Tunnel Project — a new underground crossing in New York — has been much less than expected.
Amtrak estimated the environmental impact statement would take four years to complete, but Moorman told the Railroads Subcommittee it will be complete in the first quarter of 2018 — two years early.
The Hudson project is of "particular importance" because of flooding damage caused by Superstorm Sandy nearly five years ago, said Moorman.
The project has a clock running out on it, he added. "At some point they will not be able to be maintained reliably, thereby shutting off effective rail transportation for the 200,000 commuters that move into and out of Manhattan and New Jersey every day," Moorman said.
Lawmakers also expressed concern about the timeline. "I predict that if one of those tunnels goes because it was damaged by Sandy, the country's going to suffer; the economy of the country is going to suffer," said Rep. Albio Sires (D-N.J.).
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/10/05/stories/1060062713
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Trump Takes a First Step Toward Scrapping Obama’s Global Warming Policy
Oct 4, 2017 | The New York Times
By Lisa Friedman
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will repeal the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s effort to fight climate change, and will ask the public to recommend ways it could be replaced, according to an internal Environmental Protection Agency document.
The draft proposal represents the administration’s first substantive step toward rolling back the plan, which was designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, after months of presidential tweets and condemnations of Mr. Obama’s efforts to reduce climate-warming pollution.
But it also lays the groundwork for new, presumably weaker, regulations by asking for the public and industry to offer ideas for a replacement.
The E.P.A. document, “October 2017 Tiering List,” lays out coming policy issues of high priority for the agency’s office of air and radiation, which oversees air pollution policies.
“The agency is issuing a proposal to repeal the rule,” the document states. It says the agency will issue a formal notice of its intention to develop a new rule “similarly intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing fossil-fueled electric utility generating units and to solicit information for the agency to consider in developing such a rule.”Continue reading the main storyRELATED COVERAGETrump Wants to Repeal Obama’s Climate Plan. The Next Fight: Its Replacement.SEPT. 28, 2017E.P.A. Chief’s Calendar: A Stream of Industry Meetings and Trips HomeOCT. 3, 2017Court Gives Trump Small Victory in Push Against Clean Power Plan APRIL 28, 2017E.P.A. to Spend Nearly $25,000 on a Soundproof Booth for Pruitt SEPT. 26, 2017RECENT COMMENTSebmem 2 hours ago
Too bad the article leaves out significant facts. Under the endangerment finding, the federal courts ruled that the EPA could regulate...roger 7 hours ago
Every time I think that this administration has taken all morels, human decincy, and common sense and sunk to the absolute bottom, one of...Lew Fournier 7 hours ago
Even die-hard Republicans should see where this is going — total abdication to big polluters who happen to be big donors.Wake up, GOP!SEE ALL COMMENTS WRITE A COMMENT
The document does not explain how the E.P.A. will justify to the courts the decision to eliminate the regulation. Several industry attorneys familiar with the agency’s plans said they expected Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, to argue that the Obama administration relied on an overly broad reading of federal clean air laws in writing the Clean Power Plan.
President Trump has vowed since the campaign to “get rid” of the Obama-era environmental regulations. He has called the Clean Power Plan “stupid” and “job killing,” and in an executive order issued in March he directed Mr. Pruitt to dismantle the rules. Last month, Mr. Trump appeared to claim he had already done so, telling a crowd in Alabama: “Did you see what I did to that? Boom, gone.”
Killing the regulation has also been a high priority for Mr. Pruitt, who as attorney general of Oklahoma sued to overturn it in court.
But in recent weeks, industry groups have pressed the Trump administration to fashion a new, narrower measure in its stead. Many have argued that creating such a replacement, rather than simply repealing the Clean Power Plan, is necessary to avoid lawsuits. Under a landmark agency determination known as the endangerment finding, the E.P.A. is required to regulate carbon emissions.
Mr. Pruitt has been under pressure from interest groups that deny the scientific consensus on climate change — that it is occurring and caused by human emissions — to overturn that determination. The E.P.A. document does not indicate Mr. Pruitt’s plans, but creating a new regulation implicitly accepts that the federal government has a role in addressing the reduction of carbon dioxide.
It remains unclear when the agency will formally repeal the rule. Liz Bowman, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, declined to comment on the document or plans for the rule.
The Clean Power Plan, which required states to cut greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants by 32 percent by 2030 relative to 2005 has been tied up in litigation. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had set an Oct. 7 deadline for the E.P.A. to show progress in its decision making.
Brian Deese, who served as a senior adviser on climate change to Mr. Obama, said the E.P.A. was buying time. Asking the public for ideas, he said, is what an agency does when it is uncertain about how to proceed. Consideration of a new regulation could take months or even years, he said.
“They’re trying to walk this tightrope,” Mr. Deese said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/climate/trump-climate-change.html?_r=0
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Trump Said to Begin Repeal of Obama Power Plant Emission Cuts
Oct 5, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The Trump administration will propose repealing former President Barack Obama's signature plan for combating climate change by asserting that its expansive approach to addressing carbon emissions exceeds legal limits, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.
The Environmental Protection Agency will also issue a formal request for the public to offer ideas for a replacement to the Clean Power Plan that could be more modest in scope, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the proposal is still under review at the White House.
The proposed repeal could be released this week or next, they said. An advanced notice of formal rulemaking, which may come later, isn't slated to outline a specific replacement plan, though the administration is setting the stage for a new regulation that focuses on emissions from individual power plants, rather than the broader model adopted under Obama.
President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to scrap the Clean Power Plan, and his environmental chief, Scott Pruitt, went to court to challenge the rule in his previous job as Oklahoma's attorney general. The rule was seen as critical for the U.S. to comply with its Paris climate agreement commitment, but Trump has moved to exit that global accord.
Clean Power Unplugged
The Clean Power Plan was designed to cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 but never took effect. The U.S. Supreme Court put the initiative on hold in February 2016 at the request of some of the more than two dozen states suing to overturn the rule.
The Clean Power Plan dictated specific carbon-cutting targets for states based on a complex formula tied to their emissions from power plants in 2012. It then gave state leaders broad latitude to come up with plans to achieve those reductions. By design, it imposed uneven burdens on states, with those relying on coal-fired power facing a bigger imposition than states that have embraced wind and solar power.
Obama's EPA opted for a more holistic approach instead of the more conventional tactic of imposing specific limits on individual power plants, arguing it would be more flexible and cost effective. Limiting the regulation to what each plant could achieve by improving efficiency and installing more emissions controls might result in diminished reductions of greenhouse gases.
That novel approach—regulating emissions by going beyond power plants themselves—has drawn criticism from some states, coal industry leaders and conservatives who argue it ran afoul of the Clean Air Act and would encourage utilities to jettison coal-fired power plants.
Fenceline Efficiencies
Pruitt, the EPA administrator, offered a different, “inside-the-fenceline” approach for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from generating electricity in 2014. His Oklahoma plan would have directed power plant owners to improve efficiency at the sites.
Several power generators have implored the Trump administration to offer a replacement regulation instead of just repealing the Clean Power Plan, arguing that the resulting policy vacuum and legal ambiguity would invite citizen suits and create too much uncertainty for their businesses.
For instance, the Coalition for Innovative Climate Solutions, which represents electric generating companies, has asked administration officials for a replacement rule that would provide “regulatory certainty” and “accommodate the broad diversity in state” energy portfolios.
The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has been vetting the EPA's repeal proposal since June.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=121717388&vname=dennotallissues&fn=121717388&jd=121717388
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Strategic Plan Mum On Climate, Big On 'Federalism'
Oct 4, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
A draft version of U.S. EPA's new long-term strategic plan is devoid of any reference to climate change, while highlighting the need to streamline the environmental permitting process and create "consistency and certainty for the regulated community."
Under the banner of "cooperative federalism," the draft would set a broad goal of rebalancing "the power between Washington and the states to create tangible environmental results for the American people."
It also pledges to refocus EPA "on its statutory obligations under the law" and to provide the nation with clean air, land and water.
The draft, set for public release tomorrow, is intended to serve as a blueprint for EPA priorities from 2018 to 2022; senior managers will use the final document to "guide the agency's path forward, tracking progress and addressing risks and challenges that could potentially interfere with EPA's ability to accomplish its goals."
Among those goals, the plan lists reducing the number of areas in nonattainment for air quality standards, increasing the percentage of water infrastructure projects that rely on EPA financing or partnerships with businesses and completing risk evaluations for existing chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
The document also reflects EPA chief Scott Pruitt's interest in downsizing the agency, where several hundred employees have already taken advantage of buyouts and early retirement offers.
Under Pruitt's leadership, EPA will become "a Lean organization," with a management system in place to eliminate waste and maximize the value to customers and taxpayers, the draft says.
The plan is required under a 2011 law known as the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act. Once the draft is released, EPA will take public comments through Oct. 31, according to an upcoming Federal Register notice that says a final version is expected to go to Congress next February.
The updated strategy would replace the Obama-era version that spans the period from 2014 to 2018 and is still posted on EPA's website.
While sharing some similarities (the Obama-era strategy, for example, also highlighted the importance of brownfields redevelopment), they differ starkly in many areas.
The Obama administration listed "addressing climate change" as part of its top strategic goal; the Trump administration draft does not mention the phrase "climate change" in any of its approximately three dozen pages.
Also new is the priority placed on accelerating what the draft calls "permit-related decisions." While the Obama plan acknowledged the need for effective customer service, the new draft goes much further, saying EPA is committed to "speeding up approvals of permits and modifications to create certainty for the business community, leading to increased jobs and economic prosperity."
Under Pruitt, EPA will also "reinvigorate its approach to regulatory development and prioritize meeting its statutory deadlines to ensure that expectations for the regulated community and the public are clear and comprehensive and that agency actions are defensible and consistent with its authorities."
The plan does not refer to President Trump's bid to slash EPA's budget by almost one-third for the current fiscal year. And critics in the environmental community are likely to question the sincerity of the agency's commitment to some of its professed objectives.
While the draft says a reduction in the number of nonattainment areas should be a key yardstick for efforts to improve air quality, Pruitt has already unsuccessfully sought a year's delay in attainment designations for EPA's 2015 ozone standard and then failed to meet an Oct. 1 deadline for releasing them.
The draft touts greater transparency as another top objective, but Pruitt only recently followed the lead of his predecessors in releasing his public calendar.
And although the plan highlights the importance of EPA's civil enforcement program, an August report by the Environmental Integrity Project found a steep drop in the amount of fines levied on businesses and local governments through consent decrees compared with the average for the same time under the last three presidential administrations.
At the time, a top EPA enforcement official disputed the study's validity, saying it can take months or years before a consent decree is lodged with a court (Greenwire, Aug. 10).
Click here for a summary of the draft plan.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/10/04/stories/1060062649
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Barrasso Hedges On Dourson's Confirmation Prospects As EPA Toxics Chief
Oct 4, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dawn Reeves, Maria Hegstad and David LaRoss
Senate environment committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) appears to be hedging on whether the Trump administration's controversial nominee, Michael Dourson, to lead EPA's toxics office has sufficient majority support to win confirmation.
Asked by reporters after an Oct. 4 confirmation hearing for Dourson and several other EPA nominees whether there is “a majority for Dourson,” Barasso replied: "Every senator votes their conscience and their constituents' and for the country."
Barrasso's comments came after a marathon confirmation hearing where Dourson and three other EPA nominees generally sidestepped calls seeking commitments from both Republican and Democratic senators on a variety of issues they were asked about.
Of the four EPA nominees up for consideration, Dourson and William Wehrum, who has been selected to lead the air office, bore the bulk of questioning and controversy, with each refusing to offer specific commitments on any issue, including whether they would recuse themselves from working on issues at EPA on which they had advocated a position outside the agency, only saying they would follow agency ethical guidelines.
Dourson, for example, rejected calls from several Democrats to recuse himself from certain chemical issues given an apparent conflict of interest due to his past work assessing a host of chemicals on behalf of industry clients.
Wehrum, a partner at Hunton & Williams who served as acting air chief during the George W. Bush administration, also declined bipartisan calls to scale back proposed agency plans that would ease refineries' and other obligated parties' compliance with the renewable fuels standard (RFS).
While much of the questioning focused on Dourson and Wehrum, other nominees also sidestepped requests for commitments. For example, Matthew Leopold, a former Florida environment official tapped to be EPA's general counsel, dodged a request from Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) to vigorously implement EPA's risk management plan safety rule in the wake of a Sept. 18 chemical spill in Baltimore.
However, Leopold was noncommittal on how he would address the RMP rule, or any other specific policy. “My commitment, as is the administrator's, is to the rule of law. If the law requires a substance to be regulated, I would advise the administrator of that,” Leopold said.
Cardin responded, “I would like to get a greater comfort on the fact that public safety is the reason why we pass these laws . . . there needs to be a sense of urgency on public health.”
Although the nominees avoided answering more controversial requests, they did agree with Republicans on a series of less controversial topics, including committing to working more with states and criticizing Obama administration rules, such as those defining the scope of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Power Plan, and others.
For example, David Ross, a former state regulator tapped to lead EPA's water office, agreed with Sen. John Boozman's (R-AR) statement that regulators in the prior administration forced state officials into a relationship of “coercive federalism.”
“I do believe strongly in cooperative federalism,” Ross said in response. He described hearing “frustration in the relationship” between state and federal authorities and committed to taking that “head-on,” including through efforts to “get outside the Beltway . . . [and] develop a common relationship on how to manage our nation's resources.”
Democratic Hurdles
And despite the controversy, several Democrats acknowledged that even Dourson, the most controversial of the nominees, is likely to eventually be confirmed -- even though some Democrats are seeking to block his nominations on the Senate floor.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), for example, told Dourson his nomination is “one of the more shocking I have seen” in his four years in the Senate, given his pro-industry work and conclusions, though he also acknowledged that Dourson is “about to be the person [to] head an office that has the mission of protecting children.”
Nevertheless, Democrats are planning to make it difficult for Republicans to confirm the nominee. Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the committee's ranking Democrat, reiterated his pledge to continue to block the nominees using procedural hurdles until Democrats receive EPA responses to nearly two dozen oversight requests.
He said that includes blocking a pending floor vote on Susan Bodine, EPA's enforcement nominees, who cleared the committee in July.
But Carper's continuing efforts to block nominations drew criticism from Republicans. “It is deeply unfortunate that blind opposition to all of this administration’s EPA nominees, including the well-respected Susan Bodine to be EPA’s enforcement chief, has stalled the confirmation process,” Barrasso said in his opening statement. “Susan was reported in July and has been held up by the minority ever since,” he added.
Even before the hearing began, Dourson, the former EPA risk assessor and private consultant who has been tapped to lead EPA's Office of Chemical Safety & Pollution Prevention, faced extensive criticism from environmentalists and Democrats over his past work assessing risks of dozens of chemicals on behalf of industry clients.
Two Democrats, Sens. Tom Udall (D-CO) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), have already pledged publicly to blockDourson's nomination on the Senate floor, over concerns that his prior stances will undermine implementation of the newly reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
In many cases, Dourson's assessments have provided risk values that are significantly weaker than EPA's, including on at least three chemicals -- trichloroethylene (TCE), 1-Bromopropane, and 1,4-Dioxane -- that are among the first 10 that the agency is beginning to assess and potentially regulate under the new law.
But Dourson declined repeated requests from Democrats to recuse himself from agency work on issues he has previously addressed for industry clients.
For example, in an exchange with Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA), Dourson refused to commit to retaining EPA's 1,4 dioxane in risk standard, after Markey noted he has backed an exposure level that is 1,000 times weaker than EPA's.
“If confirmed, I would bring new science and thinking into the agency,” Dourson said, to which Markey said, “Mr. Dourson, it's pretty clear you never met a chemical you didn't like.” He also called him “not just an outlier but outrageous in how far from the mainstream of science you actually are.”
In a statement prior to taking questions, Dourson vowed, if confirmed, to “dedicate my mind, body and spirit to this office . . . including [protecting] the most vulnerable,” but also said he would not “deviate” from the scientific approach he had been taught by his mentors.
RFS' 'Spirit and Letter'
Democrats raised similar concerns over Wehrum, the Hunton & Williams lawyer tapped to run the EPA Office of Air & Radiation, noting that he has sued EPA on behalf of industry clients 31 times since he left the agency as part of the Bush administration in 2009, according to Carper, who added that public health groups prevailed in court 27 times in challenging EPA rules Wehrum helped to craft during the Bush era.
But Wehrum also faced repeated questions from Republican Sens. Joni Ernst (IA) and Deb Fischer (NE) about his position on EPA's recent notice of data availability that suggests easing refiners' RFS compliance by allowing imported biodiesel to receive RFS credit, as well as allowing exported ethanol to be credited as well.
Ernst noted that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt vowed to her that he would uphold the law, yet she said both moves are “contrary to the spirit of the RFS . . . as intended by Congress.” She asked Wehrum whether he would pledge to uphold the spirit and letter of the law.
“If confirmed, I look forward to working on these issues with you,” Wehrum replied, and when pressed further he said he shared the administration's “commitment to the rule of law. . . My goal, if confirmed, is to understand the law and implement the law.”
Ernst also noted a recent phone conversation between Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and President Donald Trump where the president reportedly proclaimed his “love” of ethanol.
Fischer similarly pressed Wehrum who noted that there is “no doubt, the RFS is in the law” but did not make any specific commitments about its implementation.
According to press reports, Grassley, Ernst and Fischer are slated to meet with Pruitt to discuss the RFS proposal Oct. 17.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/barrasso-hedges-doursons-confirmation-prospects-epa-toxics-chief
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48 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump
Oct 5, 2017 | The New York Times
By Nadja Popovich And Livia Albeck-Ripka
Since taking office in January, President Trump has made eliminating federal regulations a priority. His administration — with help from Republicans in Congress — has often targeted environmental rules it sees as overly burdensome to the fossil fuel industry, including major Obama-era policies aimed at fighting climate change.
To date, the the Trump administration has sought to reverse nearly 50 environmental rules, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
The chart above reflects three types of policy changes: rules that have been officially reversed; announcements and changes still in progress, pending reviews and other rulemaking procedures; and regulations whose status is unclear because of delays or court actions. (Another five rules were undone but later reinstated after legal challenges.)
Regulations have often been reversed as a direct response to petitions from oil, coal and gas companies and other industry groups, which have enjoyed a much closer relationship with key figures in the Trump administration than under President Barack Obama.
Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has met almost daily with industry executives and lobbyists. (As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mr. Pruitt sued the agency he now oversees more than a dozen times to try to block Obama-era rules.) The E.P.A. has been involved in one-third of the policy reversals identified by The Times.
Here are the details for each policy targeted by the administration so far — including who lobbied to get the regulations changed. Are there rules we missed? Email climateteam@nytimes.com or tweet @nytclimate. OVERTURNED
1. Revoked Obama-era flood standards for federal infrastructure projects
This Obama-era rule, revoked by Mr. Trump in August, required that federal agencies protect new infrastructure projects by building to higher flood standards. Building trade groups and many Republican lawmakers opposed it as costly and burdensome.
2. Rejected a ban on a potentially harmful insecticide
Dow Agrosciences, which sells the insecticide chlorpyrifos, opposed a risk analysis by the Obama-era E.P.A. that found the compound posed a risk to fetal brain and nervous system development. Mr. Pruitt rejected the E.P.A.'s analysis and denied the ban, saying the chemical needed further study.
3. Lifted a freeze on new coal leases on public lands
Coal companies weren't thrilled about the Obama administration's three-year freeze pending an environmental review. Mr. Zinke, the interior secretary, revoked the freeze and review in March. He appointed members to a new advisory committee on coal royalties in September.
4. Canceled a requirement for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions
In March, Republican officials from 11 states wrote a letter to Mr. Pruitt, saying the rule added costs and paperwork for oil and gas companies. The next day, Mr. Pruitt revoked the rule.
5. Revoked a rule that prevented coal companies from dumping mining debris into local streams
The coal industry said the rule was overly burdensome, calling it part of a “war on coal.” In February, Congress passed a bill revoking the rule, which Mr. Trump signed into law.
6. Approved the Keystone XL pipeline
Republicans, along with oil, gas and steel industry groups, opposed Mr. Obama's decision to block the pipeline, arguing that the project would create jobs and support North American energy independence. After the pipeline company reapplied for a permit, the Trump administration approved it.
7. Approved the Dakota Access pipeline
Republicans criticized Mr. Obama for delaying construction after protests led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Mr. Trump ordered an expedited review of the pipeline, and the Army approved it. Crude oil began flowing on June 1, but a federal judge later ordered a new environmental review.
8. Prohibited funding third-party projects through federal lawsuit settlements, which could include environmental programs
Companies settling lawsuits with the federal government have sometimes paid for third-party projects, like when Volkswagen put $2.7 billion toward pollution-fighting programs after its emissions cheating scandal. The Justice Department has now prohibited such payments, which some conservatives have called “slush funds.”
9. Repealed a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans
Lobbyists for the oil industry were opposed to Mr. Obama's use of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to permanently ban offshore drilling along parts of the Atlantic coast and much of the ocean around Alaska. Mr. Trump repealed the policy in an April executive order and instructed his interior secretary, Mr. Zinke, to review the locations made available for offshore drilling.
10. Proposed the use of seismic air guns for gas and oil exploration in the Atlantic
Following a executive order in April known as the America-First Offshore Energy Strategy, the Trump administration began an application process to allow five oil and gas companies to survey the Atlantic using seismic air guns, which fire loud blasts that can harm whales, fish and turtles. The Obama administration had previously denied such permits.
11. Revoked a 2016 order protecting the northern Bering Sea region in Alaska
Mr. Trump revoked Mr. Obama’s 2016 order protecting the Bering Sea and Bering Strait by conserving biodiversity, engaging Alaska Native tribes and building a sustainable economy in the Arctic, which is vulnerable to climate change.
12. Repealed an Obama-era rule regulating royalties for oil, gas and coal
Lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry opposed 2016 Interior Department regulations meant to ensure fair royalties were paid to the government for oil, gas and coal extracted from federal or tribal land. In August, the Trump administration rescinded the rule, saying it caused “confusion and uncertainty”for energy companies.
13. Withdrew guidance for federal agencies to include greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews
Republicans in Congress opposed the guidelines, which advised federal agencies to account for possible climate effects in environmental impact reviews. They argued that the government lacked the authority to make such recommendations, and that the new rules would slow down permitting.
14. Relaxed the environmental review process for federal infrastructure projects
Oil and gas industry leaders said the permit-issuing process for new infrastructure projects was costly and cumbersome. In an August executive order, Mr. Trump announced a policy he said would streamline the process for pipelines, bridges, power lines and other federal projects. The order put a single federal agency in charge of navigating environmental reviews, instituted a 90-day timeline for permit authorizaton decisions and set a goal of completing the full process in two years.
15. Announced intent to stop payments to the Green Climate Fund
Mr. Trump said he would cancel payments to the fund, a United Nations program that helps developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change. Mr. Obama had pledged $3 billion, $1 billion of which Congress has already paid out over the opposition of some Republicans.
16. Dropped proposed restrictions on mining in Bristol Bay, Alaska
A Canadian company sued the E.P.A. over an Obama-era plan to restrict mining in Bristol Bay, an important salmon fishery. The Trump administration settled the suit and allowed the company to apply for permits to build a large gold and copper mine in the area. Alaska Republicans, including Senator Lisa Murkowski, supported the mine.
17. Removed the Yellowstone grizzly bear from the endangered list
Noting that the species population had “rebounded from as few as 136 bears in 1975 to an estimated 700 today,” the Interior Department delisted the Yellowstone grizzly. Delisting the bears was first formally proposed by the Obama administration in March 2016.
18. Overturned a ban on the hunting of predators in Alaskan wildlife refuges
Alaskan politicians opposed the law, which prevented hunters from shooting wolves and grizzly bears on wildlife refuges, arguing that the state has authority over those lands. Congress passed a bill revoking the rule, which Mr. Trump signed into law.
19. Withdrew proposed limits on endangered marine mammals caught by fishing nets on the West Coast
Under Mr. Trump, the National Marine Fisheries Service withdrew the proposed rule, noting high costs to the fishing industry and arguing that sufficient protections were already in place.
20. Stopped discouraging the sale of plastic water bottles in national parks
The National Park Service had urged parks to reduce or eliminate the sale of disposable plastic water bottles in favor of filling stations and reusable bottles. The International Bottled Water Association called the action unjustified.
21. Rescinded an Obama-era order to consider climate change in managing natural resources in national parks
The 2016 policy, which called for scientific park management, among other objectives, was contested by Republicans. In August, the National Park Service said they rescinded the policy in order to eliminate confusion among the public and National Parks Service employees regarding the Trump administration’s “new vision” for America’s parks.
22. Directed agencies to stop using an Obama-era calculation of the “social cost of carbon”
As part of an expansive March 2017 executive order, Mr. Trump directed agencies to stop using an Obama-era calculation that helped rulemakers monetize the costs of carbon emissions and instead base their estimates on a 2003 cost-benefit analysis. Mr. Trump also disbanded the working group that created estimates for the social cost of carbon.
23. Revoked an update to the Bureau of Land Management's public land use planning process
Republicans and fossil fuel industry groups opposed the updated planning rule for public lands, arguing that it gave the federal government too much power at the expense of local and business interests. Congress passed a bill revoking the rule, which Mr. Trump signed into law.
24. Removed copper filter cake, an electronics manufacturing byproduct, from the “hazardous waste” list
Samsung petitioned the E.P.A. to delist the waste product, which is produced during electroplating at its Texas semiconductor facility. The E.P.A. granted the petition after a public comment period.
IN PROGRESS
25. Proposed repeal and replacement of the Clean Power Plan
Coal companies and Republican officials in many states opposed the plan, Mr. Obama’s signature climate policy, which set strict limits on carbon emissions from existing coal- and gas-fired power plants. Mr. Trump issued an executive order in March instructing the E.P.A. to re-evaluate the plan, which is tied up in court and has not yet taken effect. In October, the E.P.A. proposed repealing the plan and opened a public comment period soliciting suggested replacements.
26. Announced intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement
Arguing that it tied his hands in matters of domestic energy policy, Mr. Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris accord, under which the United States had pledged to cut emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The Trump administration has formally notified the United Nations of its intent to withdraw, but it cannot complete the process until late 2020.
27. Proposed rescinding a rule that protected tributaries and wetlands under the Clean Water Act
Farmers, real estate developers, golf course owners and many Republicans opposed an Obama-era clarification of the Clean Water Act that extended protections over small waterways. Under Mr. Trump's direction, Mr. Pruitt released a proposal in June to roll back the expanded definition.
28. Reopened a review of fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks
Automakers said it would be difficult and costly to meet fuel economy goals they had agreed upon with the Obama administration. Under Mr. Trump, the E.P.A. and Department of Transportation have reopened a standards review for model years 2021 through 2025. The administration is also considering easing penalties on automakers who do not comply with the federal standards.
29. Recommended shrinking or modifying 10 national monuments
Republicans in Congress said the Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to designate national monuments, had been abused by previous administrations. Mr. Obama used the law to protect more than 4 million acres of land and several million square miles of ocean. Mr. Trump ordered a review of recent monuments; his interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, recommended changes for 10 sites.
30. Reviewing 12 marine protected areas
As part of his April executive order aimed at expanding offshore oil and gas drilling, Mr. Trump called for a review of national marine sanctuaries and monuments designated or expanded within the past decade. In June, NOAA announced that 12 protected marine areas were under review.
31. Reviewing limits on toxic discharge from power plants into public waterways
Utility and fossil fuel industry groups opposed the rule, which limited the amount of toxic metals — arsenic, lead and mercury, among others — power plants could release into public waterways. Industry representatives said complying with the guidelines, which were to take effect in 2018, would be extremely expensive. In September, Mr. Pruitt postponed the rule until 2020.
32. Reviewing rules regulating coal ash waste from power plants
Utility industry groups petitioned to change the rule, which regulates how power plants dispose of coal ash in waste pits often located near waterways. The E.P.A. agreed to reconsider the rule.
33. Reviewing emissions standards for new, modified and reconstructed power plants
In addition to the Clean Power Plan, Mr. Trump's Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence called on the E.P.A. to review a related rule limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new, modified, and reconstructed power plants.
34. Reviewing emissions rules for power plant start-ups, shutdowns and malfunctions
Power companies and other industry groups sued the Obama administration over the rule, which asked 36 states to tighten emissions exemptions for power plants and other facilities. The E.P.A. under Mr. Trump asked the court to suspend the case while the rule undergoes review.
35. Announced plans to review greater sage grouse habitat protections
Oil and gas industry leaders called the Obama administration's plan for protecting the bird “deeply flawed” and welcomed the Interior Department review, which will reassess restrictions on energy production.
36. Announced plans to rescind water pollution regulations for fracking on federal and Indian lands
Energy companies petitioned the Bureau of Land Management to rescind the rule, which was proposed by Mr. Obama in 2015 but never enforced amid legal challenges. In July, the bureau announced plans to revoke the rule, citing Mr. Trump's "prioritization of domestic energy production."
37. Reviewing new safety regulations on offshore drilling
The American Petroleum Institute and other trade groups wrote to the Trump administration, raising concerns over oil rig safety regulations implemented after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. In August, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement confirmed it was moving forward with the review. Mr. Trump had ordered a review of the rules earlier in the year.
38. Ordered a review of a rule regulating offshore oil and gas exploration by floating vessels in the Arctic
As part of the expansive executive order on offshore driling, Mr. Trump called for an immediate review of a rule intended to strengthen safety and environmental standards for exploratory drilling in the Arctic. The rule, a response to the 2013 Kulluk accident in the Gulf of Alaska, increased oversight of floating vessels and other mobile offshore drilling units.
39. Proposed ending a restriction on exploratory drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Republicans have long sought to to open the Alaska refuge to gas and oil driling. In August, an Interior Department internal memo proposed lifting restrictions on exploratory seismic studies in the region, which covers more than 30,000 square miles and is home to polar bears, caribou and other Arctic animals.
40. Ordered a review of federal regulations on hunting methods in Alaska
Obama-era rules prohibited certain hunting methods in Alaska’s national preserves. They overruled state law, which had allowed hunters to bait bears with food, shoot caribou from boats and kill bear cubs with their mothers present. Alaska sued the Interior Department, claiming that the regulations affected traditional harvesting. The Trump administration ordered a review.
41. Announced a review of emissions standards for trailers and glider kits
Stakeholders in the transportation industry opposed the Obama-era rule, which for the first time applied emissions standards to trailers and glider vehicles. They argued that the E.P.A. lacked the authority to regulate them, because their products are not motorized.
IN LIMBO
42. Reviewing a rule limiting methane emissions at new oil and gas drilling sites
Lobbyists for the oil and gas industries petitioned Mr. Pruitt to reconsider a rule limiting emissions of methane and other pollutants from new and modified oil and gas wells. A federal appeals court has ruled that the E.P.A. must enforce the Obama-era regulation while it rewrites the rule. The E.P.A. said it may do so on a “case by case” basis.
43. Put on hold rules aimed at cutting methane emissions from landfills
Waste industry groups objected to this Obama-era regulation, which required landfills to set up methane gas collection systems and monitor emissions. In May, the E.P.A. suspended enforcement of the new standards for 90 days, pending a review. Environmental groups challenged the action in court, but the delay period has since passed, throwing the status of the case into question.
44. Delayed a lawsuit over a rule regulating airborne mercury emissions from power plants
Coal companies, along with Republican officials in several states, sued over this Obama-era rule, which regulated the amount of mercury and other pollutants that fossil fuel power plants can emit. They argued that the rule helped shutter coal plants, many of which were already compliant. Oral arguments in the case have been delayed while the E.P.A. reviews the rule.
45. Delayed a rule aiming to improve safety at facilities that use hazardous chemicals
Chemical, agricultural and power industry groups said that the rule, a response to a 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant that killed 15 people, did not increase safety. Mr. Pruitt delayed the standards until 2019, pending a review. Eleven states are now suing over the delay.
46. Continuing review of proposed groundwater protections for certain uranium mines
Republicans in Congress came out against the 2015 rule. They said the E.P.A. had not conducted an adequate cost-benefit analysis of the rule, which regulated byproduct materials from a type of uranium mining. The Obama administration submitted a revised proposal one day before Mr. Trump was sworn into office. The Trump administration must now decide the fate of the rule.
47. Delayed compliance dates for federal building efficiency standards
Republicans in Congress opposed the rules, which set efficiency standards for the design and construction of new federal buildings. The Trump administration delayed compliance until Sept. 30, but it is unclear whether the rules are now in effect.
48. Withdrew a rule that would help consumers buy more fuel-efficient tires
The rule required tire manufacturers and retailers to provide consumers with information about replacement car tires. The tire industry opposed several aspects of the rule, but had been working with the government to refine it. The Trump administration withdrew the proposed rule in January but has not said whether it may be reinstated. At least five other rules were
reinstated after legal challengesEnvironmental groups have sued the Trump administration over many of the proposed rollbacks, and, in some cases, have succeeded in reinstating environmental rules.
1. Reinstated rule limiting methane emissions on public lands
The oil and gas industry opposed the rule, which required companies to control methane emissions on federal or tribal land. The House voted this year to revoke the rule, but the Senate rejected the measure, 51 to 49. The Bureau of Land Management later suspended enforcement of parts of the rule. In early October, a federal court ruled that the B.L.M. had acted unlwafully in delaying the rule, and ordered its immediate enforcement.
2. Reinstated a requirement for reporting emissions on federal highways
Transportation and infrastructure industry groups opposed a measure that required state and local officials to track greenhouse gas emissions from vehichles on federally funded highways. The Trump administration twice postponed the rule's effective date, putting it off indefinitely on May 19. The rule was reinstated after environmental groups and eight states challenged the delay in court.
3. Delayed by one year a compliance deadline for new ozone pollution standards, but later reversed course
Mr. Pruitt initially delayed the compliance deadline for a 2015 national ozone standard, but reversed course after 15 states and the District of Columbia sued.
4. Delayed publishing efficiency standards for household appliances
After being sued by a number of states and environmental groups for failing to publish efficiency standards for appliances including heaters, air conditioners and refrigerators, the Trump administration released its rules on May 26.
5. Reinstated rule limiting the discharge of mercury by dental offices into municipal sewers
The E.P.A. reinstated an Obama-era rule that regulated the disposal of dental amalgam, a filling material that contains mercury and other toxic metals. The agency initially put the rule on hold as part of a broad regulatory freeze, but environmental groups sued. The American Dental Association came out in support of the rule.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html
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