EPA Approves Chevron's New Cancer-Causing, 'Climate-Friendly' Fuel

What’s the story?

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently greenlit the production of a new fuel from Chevron’s climate-friendly initiative, which researchers found could emit dangerous carcinogens. 
• The new fuel that Chevron will soon start producing is made out of discarded plastics. ProPublica, an investigative journalism nonprofit, and the Guardian obtained agency reports of the fuel production emitting air pollutants that would cause cancer in one out of four people exposed to it over a lifetime — higher than the risk of lung cancer for smokers.

How risky is the new fuel?

• The reports found the risk of the fuel is 250,000 times higher than the level the EPA typically deems acceptable when approving new chemicals. Linda Birnbaum, the former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said: 

“That kind of risk is obscene. You can’t let that get out.”

• A former EPA scientist, Maria Doa, said she was so alarmed by the chemicals’ risk that she initially thought it was a typographical error. Doa, who used to run the division that manages chemicals risks, said: 

“EPA should not allow these risks…anywhere.”

• The jet fuel will cause a significant risk to those living within a three-mile radius of Chevron's refinery in Pascagoula, MI, a low-income region where around 25% of the residents live in poverty.

Is this legal?

• Under federal law, the EPA cannot approve new chemicals with high environmental and health risks unless it proposes a way to minimize them. 
• An agency spokesperson wrote that their team’s lifetime cancer risk calculation is a conservative estimate with "high uncertainty." Given the uncertainty, the EPA is legally entitled to order lab testing to determine more precise potential harms of the new plastic-based fuel, but decided not to. When asked why the agency didn’t require testing, a spokesperson said: 

“[The] EPA does not believe these additional test results would change the risks identified nor the unreasonable risks finding.”

• The EPA refuses to release the names of the chemicals in their new fuel, painting an even more questionable image of the product. ProPublica and the Guardian acquired a single consent order from another one of their plastic-based fuels, which researchers found include chemicals that pose serious health risks: developmental problems in children, deterioration of the nervous system, and harm to the reproductive system, liver, kidney, blood, and spleen. 

Are EPA regulations outdated?

• While Chevron spokespeople defend the fuel, citing their company’s compliance with the Toxic Substances Control Act, Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) warns the public not to rely on outdated chemical standards. 
• Environmentalists call Chevron's defense nonsensical, as the Clean Water Act doesn't address air pollution, and the Clean Air Act doesn't regulate these new fuels.
• Scott Throwe, an independent environmental consultant who was an air pollution specialist at the EPA, believes the current regulations are antiquated. He pointed to the limitations in federal laws, noting how they were implemented long before these modern chemicals were manufactured. Throwe said today's testing and monitoring requirements were not designed to capture these new pollutants we see today.
• Activists are urging the EPA's New Chemicals Division to update the laws to better suit the dangers of present-day chemicals and the needs of communities. 

Want to protect your health? Tell the EPA to improve regulations and ban cancer-causing fuels.

-Jamie Epstein 

(Photo credit: Flickr/Jes Lu)