EPA moving to ban more harmful chemicals after toxics law overhaul

A worker paints a wall in Oakland, California, in 2019.

Photo By Santiago Mejia, courtesy The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

“At least nine of the 10 chemicals they chose are ones people have been concerned about and have been trying to get the EPA to ban for years.”

— Daniel Rosenberg

When Brian Wynne got the phone call from his parents in 2017, they could barely get the news out.

Despite wearing a respirator, his brother Drew Wynne died at age 31 while using a product containing methylene chloride to resurface the floor of Riptide Coffee, his South Carolina shop. The chemical, linked to heart failure and sudden death, is often used as a paint remover. Brian remembers the chemical’s lingering lemon-like scent in the shop in the days after Drew’s death.

“I fully believe the number of deaths associated with this chemical are dramatically underreported due to the fact that the chemical has a deceiving smell, but also commonly it looks like a heart attack,” Brian told The Nation’s Health.

In 2018, protestors in Portland, Maine, draw attention to the risks of paint strippers containing methylene chloride by holding photos of people who died from exposure to the chemical.

Photo by Ben McCanna, courtesy Portland Press Herald/Getty Images

Drew is one at least 85 people to die in the U.S. from exposure to methylene chloride, one of four chemicals the Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed to ban all or most uses of. The others are carbon tetrachloride, chrysotile asbestos and perchloroethylene. Often used in refrigerants, exposure to carbon tetrachloride can lead to cancer and liver damage. Chrysotile asbestos, found in car parts, cement and roofing materials, can cause lung cancer. Perchloroethylene, used as a solvent by dry cleaning businesses, can cause long term neurological and organ damage.

The four chemicals are among the first 10 EPA is identifying and evaluating for safety after a 2016 overhaul to the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act. While the act previously focused mainly on the cost of regulating chemicals, the 2016 update mandated that EPA account for the health of workers as well as vulnerable people such as children, pregnant women and older adults who live near chemical manufacturers.

In the case of methylene chloride, EPA says approximately 1.3 million people either use the chemical or are exposed to it annually despite its known health risks, making it an important target for review.

“At least nine of the 10 chemicals they chose are ones people have been concerned about and have been trying to get the EPA to ban for years,” Daniel Rosenberg, JD, director of federal toxics policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Nation’s Health. “Those are high-volume chemicals that people have been concerned about for decades. It’s taken a while to get going.”

Part of the 2016 overhaul to toxic substances regulation is an ongoing safety review process of existing chemicals that labels them as low or high priority, and moves high-priority chemicals — those that could unreasonably harm vulnerable populations — through a risk evaluation.

Relying on the best available research, scientific testing and public input, EPA’s risk evaluation looks at the chemical’s relationship with human and environmental health, the damage it causes, and how often people are exposed. From there, EPA may issue a risk management rule about whether to restrict or ban certain uses.

As of August, EPA had not finalized the risk management rules on the four chemicals it proposed to ban. Six existing chemicals are listed in the “final risk evaluation” stage, including N-methylpyrrolidone, which is also found in paint remover. But the Toxic Substances Control Act requires the EPA to regularly designate 20 chemicals as high priority, and another 20 as low priority. Once an evaluation for an existing chemical is complete, another must be swapped in immediately to restart the process, said Jeffery Morris, director of EPA’s Existing Chemicals Risk Assessment Division.

“We’re working very hard to complete some of the current risk evaluations by the end of 2024,” Morris told The Nation’s Health. “The prioritization process is nine to 12 months long.”

For new chemicals and new uses of existing chemicals, companies are required to submit them to EPA for a 90-day safety review before they can manufacture or import them. The agency then determines if the chemical poses an unreasonable risk to human or environmental health.

“I think one problem is they haven’t been sufficiently funded to address all the additional work,” said Maria Doa, PhD, senior director of chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund. “They’ve also been slow in the (Toxic Substances Control Act) program to embrace the direction Congress gave them to consider these susceptible sub-populations.”

EPA officials admit that having enough staff to complete risk evaluations for existing and new chemicals in a timely fashion is an ongoing issue. The process to evaluate an existing chemical is a multi-year effort from prioritization to risk management.

A worker at an eco-friendly dry cleaner sorts shirts in San Francisco in 2007. EPA has proposed a nationwide phaseout of perchloroethylene, a toxic solvent commonly used by many U.S. dry cleaners. California banned use of the chemical in dry cleaning businesses this year.

Photo by Justin Sullivan, courtesy Getty Images

For new chemicals, prior to the amended Toxic Substances Control Act, EPA conducted risk evaluations on 20% of new chemicals versus 100% of them today, said Shari Barash, acting director of EPA’s New Chemicals Division. The agency receives about 500 submissions annually from manufacturers for new chemicals.

“In that way, it’s a fivefold increase without commensurate resources,” Barash told The Nation’s Health. “So that’s one of the things we’ve been challenged with.”

Politics have also held up some of EPA’s work.

For example, a proposal under President Barack Obama’s administration to ban consumer and commercial use of paint removers containing methylene chloride was shelved under President Donald Trump’s administration in 2017. That prompted the Natural Resources Defense Council, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement and Earthjustice to sue EPA in 2019 for an unreasonable delay in issuing a final rule on the chemical.

The mothers of two victims, Kevin Hartley and Joshua Atkins, who died in 2017 and 2018 after exposure to the chemical, were part of a second petition on the same lawsuit, leading to an EPA proposal to ban consumer uses. But when the Trump-era EPA issued a 2020 risk evaluation that downplayed methylene chloride’s health risks, the council joined groups such as United Steelworkers and Sierra Club to sue EPA again that year, claiming its assessment was flawed. That suit forced EPA to revise its findings.

With EPA’s progress sometimes held up in legal, political and bureaucratic limbo, state legislatures have jumped in to ban or restrict the use of harmful chemicals. There are over 300 laws in nearly 40 states that address the effects of harmful chemicals, according to Safer States, an organization of state-based groups advocating for chemical safety policies.

This year, California became the first state to phase out perchloroethylene use in dry cleaning businesses. A 2007 state airborne toxic control measure required all California dry cleaning businesses to stop using the chemical by Jan. 1 of this year. In comparison, EPA this June proposed a 10-year phase out at dry cleaners that was subject to public comment through mid-August.

A worker scrapes paint from a wall. Under the Toxic Substances Control Act, EPA is evaluating the safety of common chemicals used by workers and consumers that can cause harm to health. The agency has proposed banning four chemicals this year.

Photo by JPistock, courtesy iStockphoto

Minnesota state policymakers also passed a law to phase out perchloroethylene use by 2026. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has spent decades doing remediation projects in neighborhoods near closed businesses where the chemical contaminated ground water and drinking water, said Stephen Mikkelson, a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency communications specialist. Resident complaints about strange odors, nausea and eye irritation have often triggered investigations, he said. The new law will allow the state to take action before the proposed EPA ban takes effect.

Retailers have also played a role. Stores such as Lowe’s, Home Depot and Sherwin-Williams removed products containing methylene chloride from their shelves, thanks to pressure from groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.

“While the law put EPA on a schedule and required action where it had not had requirements before, we still recognized that the power of the states to take action and to lead one another on action on top of chemicals would be more important than ever,” said Liz Hitchcock, director of Toxic-Free Future’s federal policy program.

Hitchcock said she wants per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, known as PFAS, added to EPA’s rotation for risk evaluation, adding that states in particular have been making more headway when it comes to regulation.

Referred to as “forever chemicals,” PFAS chemicals are found in products such as cosmetics and cookware, and are linked to health problems such as cancer and reproductive system issues. According to Safer States, nearly 200 policies in 33 states are aimed at phasing out PFAS. Over 200 million Americans are exposed to PFAS chemicals in their drinking water alone, according to a 2020 Environmental Science and Technology Letters study by two Environmental Working Group scientists.

“PFAS are a whole class of chemicals that are contaminating water supplies and contaminating the bodies of people across the country and all across the world,” Hitchcock told The Nation’s Health. “That is an area where states are doing tremendous work on the chemicals people are exposed to — on preventing, on cleaning up and just identifying what we’re exposed to.”

EPA launched its National PFAS Testing Strategy in 2021 to require manufacturers to provide PFAS toxicity data to the agency. In August, the agency issued its third test order under the strategy, ordering three companies to conduct testing and submit results on a chemical used in the production of nonstick coatings, stain repellent and other products.

“We’re using all the tools at our disposal to rapidly gather data about these substances so that we can better understand the potential environmental and human health impacts of PFAS and take any necessary steps to address them,” Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a news release.

• Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association