Days after ProPublica detailed dangerous working conditions at a chlorine plant that used asbestos till it closed final 12 months, public well being advocates and two U.S. lawmakers are renewing requires Congress to ban the carcinogen.
“American employees are dying from asbestos. It’s well past time to finish its use,” stated Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon. “This ProPublica report confirms our worst fears: employees coping with asbestos are sometimes left weak to this lethal, harmful substance.”
Merkley and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., are sponsoring the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act, which might completely ban the importing and use of asbestos. The proposed laws is known as after Alan Reinstein, who died in 2006 from mesothelioma, a most cancers attributable to asbestos. Alan’s spouse, Linda, co-founded the Asbestos Illness Consciousness Group, one of many main nonprofits that has advocated for shielding the general public from the hazards of asbestos.
The shortage of a ban “places employees, their households, and the encircling communities in danger for lethal illness and dying from asbestos publicity, which as ProPublica detailed, is sickeningly frequent and widespread and with out penalties for the businesses that enable it to proceed,” stated Linda Reinstein in a press release.
Reinstein has helped construct a coalition of medical doctors, public well being specialists, commerce unions and advocates to push Congress to go the asbestos ban. This week, Reinstein’s group sent letters to members of Congress calling for his or her help and highlighting the findings of the ProPublica investigation.
“This highly effective article explodes the decades-long declare of the chlor-alkali trade that its use of asbestos is protected for employees,” stated Bob Sussman, a former deputy administrator for the Environmental Safety Company throughout the Clinton administration who now works as counsel for the Asbestos Illness Consciousness Group. “There can not be any doubt that, as EPA has discovered, asbestos-using vegetation current a severe threat to the employee well being and this threat have to be eradicated.”
The lawmakers filed the invoice in Might and it had one Senate committee listening to in June. For the reason that ProPublica report was revealed in collaboration with NPR final Thursday, three Home members have signed on to co-sponsor the bill.
In contrast to dozens of different nations, the US has by no means totally banned asbestos. The EPA made an try to take action in 1989, nevertheless it was overturned in federal court docket in 1991, and efforts by lawmakers to outlaw the carcinogen have repeatedly fallen brief. In the meantime, the chemical trade has continued to import lots of of tons of asbestos — greater than 200,000 kilos — yearly to be used in chlorine manufacturing vegetation.
The trade has lengthy fought in opposition to a ban by saying its employees have been properly protected by strict security measures and powerful office security rules. Public well being organizations and lawmakers had suspected that these security claims have been exaggerated, however for years have been unable to evaluate the situations inside these vegetation.
The ProPublica investigation discovered that security requirements have been routinely disregarded at what was as soon as America’s longest-standing chlorine plant. Staff on the OxyChem Niagara Falls plant stated asbestos would splatter on the ceilings and partitions, roll throughout the ground like tumbleweeds and follow employees’ garments. Home windows and doorways have been left open, permitting asbestos mud to flee. The corporate’s personal industrial hygiene monitoring confirmed their employees have been repeatedly uncovered to unsafe ranges. Federal office regulators had additionally stopped conducting common unannounced inspections on the plant; the Occupational Security and Well being Administration included the Niagara Falls web site and others prefer it in a particular program for “exemplary” workplaces.
In response to ProPublica’s reporting, OxyChem stated the well being and security of its employees is its high precedence. The corporate stated the employees’ accounts from Niagara Falls have been inaccurate, however wouldn’t present specifics on what was incorrect. The plant closed final 12 months for unrelated causes. Eight different vegetation within the U.S. nonetheless use asbestos.
“It’s devastating to see at each step of the way in which the place employee security wasn’t protected: by the businesses, and by the EPA and OSHA throughout previous administrations,” stated Merkley.
Asbestos is a poisonous mineral that may trigger severe diseases like scarring of the lungs, known as asbestosis, and mesothelioma, a vicious most cancers that kills most victims inside a couple of years. The federal government’s incapacity to ban asbestos has been cited as one of many best failures of the U.S. chemical regulatory system. “The system was so complicated, it was so burdensome that our nation hasn’t even been capable of uphold a ban on asbestos — a identified carcinogen that kills as many as 10,000 People yearly,” President Barack Obama stated in 2016 on the day he signed laws meant to repair these issues.
Later that 12 months, the EPA started the formal technique of re-evaluating the dangers related to asbestos. It took 5 years, and in 2020, the company decided chlorine employees have been at “unreasonable risk” from their publicity to asbestos.
In April, the EPA proposed a brand new asbestos ban. The rule must be finalized earlier than it goes into impact, and the EPA has stated that it’s planning to be finished with that course of by November 2023. In that point, EPA will think about trade arguments in opposition to a ban, together with claims that employees face little threat of publicity. The chemical firms have additionally argued the ban might disrupt the nation’s provide of chlorine used to wash consuming water, regardless that public well being advocates say solely a small portion of chlorine from asbestos-reliant vegetation is used for that function. Twelve Republican attorneys common have backed the businesses and stated an asbestos ban would place a “heavy and unreasonable burden” on the trade.
Two key commerce associations, the American Chemistry Council and The Chlorine Institute, stated in statements this week that they proceed to imagine asbestos is used safely within the chlorine trade.
Michal Freedoff, the official in control of chemical regulation at EPA, advised ProPublica she couldn’t touch upon the ultimate rule-making course of however stated the company wouldn’t be backing down on the science.
The company has already prolonged the unique deadlines for evaluating and regulating asbestos. The analysis was imagined to be full three years after it began in 2016, and the rules ought to have been finalized inside two years after that. Lawmakers and public well being advocates fear, given the chemical trade’s affect, that there can be even additional delays or a brand new ban can be held up in court docket. (In response, the EPA identified that regardless of an elevated workload, its funds for chemical regulation has remained flat for six years. It additionally stated the Trump administration missed deadlines for 9 out of the primary 10 chemical substances, together with asbestos, that have been to be regulated underneath the brand new 2016 regulation.)
Organizations just like the Environmental Protection Fund are calling for the EPA to expedite its ban, particularly given the findings within the ProPublica investigation. The “reporting underscores the necessity to take motion to ban chrysotile asbestos, notably to guard employees,” stated Maria Doa, senior director of chemical substances coverage on the Environmental Protection Fund. “Given the sturdy, well-established science on the unreasonable dangers posed by chrysotile asbestos, we reiterate our name for EPA to expedite its closing determination to ban chrysotile asbestos and to require fast implementation of the ban.”
Merkley and Bonamici, together with the Asbestos Illness Consciousness Group, are as a substitute pushing Congress to write down a ban into regulation, which might speed up the method and make it tougher for the trade to overturn it in court docket. The invoice would ban all six identified forms of asbestos, whereas the EPA rule would solely ban the one kind primarily used within the U.S.
ProPublica reached out to Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., and Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., the chairs of the committees the place the invoice was filed. Carper stated he stays “dedicated to working with our colleagues on each side of the aisle, in addition to advocates and trade stakeholders” on the proposal. Pallone, nevertheless, stated he believed the EPA will act on asbestos. “I’m assured the Biden Administration takes this public well being menace as critically as I do, and sit up for persevering with to work with them to get asbestos banned as soon as and for all,” he stated in a press release. The minority leaders of the committees, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., didn’t reply to questions or present touch upon the situations on the Niagara Falls plant.
