Brattleboro, Vermont, Sept. 20, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, Coming Clean and the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform launched a report that profiles three chemical incidents that occurred inside two weeks this January, and recommends particular security measures that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ought to require so as to forestall future chemical disasters.
On August 31, 2022, the EPA revealed proposed revisions to the Risk Management Program (RMP), which regulates roughly 12,000 high-risk amenities within the U.S. that use or retailer extremely hazardous chemical compounds. EPA was particularly directed by Congress to use this program to forestall disasters, but greater than 140 dangerous chemical incidents happen on common yearly.
On January 26, 2022, an explosion on the Westlake Chemical South plant precipitated 7,000 college students to shelter in place within the Lake Charles space, and despatched a plume of foul-smelling smoke into the air. This facility has reported at the very least 14 different chemical incidents to the EPA. But below the company’s newly proposed RMP rule, it could be exempted from necessities to contemplate and doc safer expertise and chemical alternate options, and it could not require that safer chemical compounds or processes be applied.
Preventing Disaster presents actionable suggestions the EPA ought to embrace in its remaining rule that would forestall comparable incidents from occurring sooner or later, together with:
- Requiring all RMP amenities to contemplate, doc, and implement safer chemical compounds and expertise;
- Requiring RMP amenities to not solely contemplate the dangers posed by pure hazards, as proposed within the draft rule, however to take significant steps to put together for these dangers, equivalent to implementing backup energy for chemical manufacturing and storage processes.
“Overall,” the report concludes, “EPA’s draft rule, rather than adopting common-sense prevention requirements, continues to rely on voluntary actions by high-risk facilities. This approach has failed to prevent many chemical disasters over the last 25 years. If the draft rule is not strengthened, facility workers and neighbors across the country will continue to bear the human, environmental, and financial costs of more preventable disasters.”
“The EPA still has time to get this rule right,” stated Steve Taylor, Program Director for Coming Clean, who contributed to the report. “Communities at the fenceline of these hazardous facilities, and the workers inside them, are sick of industry stonewalling and EPA excuses. A stronger rule is needed to ensure that hazards are removed, or we will continue to see more chemical disasters.”
“We’re glad that EPA recognizes the need to reconsider the RMP rule; preventing disasters is a longstanding priority for EJHA. Unfortunately the draft rule is full of more voluntary measures, which decades of incidents have proven do not work.” stated Michele Roberts, National Co-Coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform. “We are depending on EPA to have the moral and political courage to keep the promises President Biden has made to our communities— that means a final rule that requires the transition to safer chemicals and processes wherever possible. Removing hazards before disasters can occur is the best way to protect workers and communities.”
Coming Clean and EJHA are a part of a broad coalition that features fenceline group members, well being professionals and members of Congress that has urged the EPA to undertake a stronger RMP rule for a few years. Members of this coalition will likely be vocalizing their priorities and considerations on the draft rule at digital public hearings held by the EPA on September 26, 27 and 28, 2022.
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Coming Clean is a collaborative community of frontline group activists, environmental well being and justice organizations, and coverage, science and market consultants, dedicated to remodeling the chemical trade in order that it’s not a supply of hurt. For twenty years, we now have fought to finish legacy air pollution in communities of coloration, ban poisonous pesticides that hurt farmworkers and their households, regulate hazardous amenities, and finish the sale of unsafe merchandise in greenback shops and different retailers throughout the nation. Learn extra about our Chemical Disaster Prevention Program.
The Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform is a nationwide community of grassroots Environmental and Economic Justice organizations and advocates in communities which are disproportionately impacted by poisonous chemical compounds from legacy contamination, ongoing publicity to polluting amenities and health-harming chemical compounds in family merchandise. EJHA helps a simply transition in direction of safer chemical compounds and a pollution-free economy that leaves no group or employee behind.
