The Center for Health, Environment & Justice team and I send our compassion, support and affection to those whose health and livelihoods may be affected by COVID-19. This is a worldwide crisis on a scale we have not seen in our lifetimes. We are thinking of you, your family, friends and neighbors.
As you know our team has always been about families, communities and people and at all times working on issues from the grassroots to the White House not the other way around. For the first time, the entire country now has a better understanding of the horrors of “sheltering in place.” Hundreds of our member’s communities, maybe you live in one, have been told to shelter in place because of an explosion from a pipeline, refinery, chemical plant and other releases.
I feel safe in my home, even though I’m in the high risk age range. I am also grateful that I have a place to stay with food, water and clean air, until the public health crisis is over. I can work from home, hold virtual meetings, talk with my friends through the phone, Facebook or e-mail. As terrifying as this virus is I still feel safe, maybe I shouldn’t.
Unfortunately, safe is not how so many of communities CHEJ works with feel, when asked to shelter in place because of an environmental release or explosion. There are a number of reason for their fears.
–No one told them something was going to happen and they should seek safe shelter, stock up on food, water and toilet paper.
–There wasn’t days of news castors telling folks what scientists think the real dangers are, what health symptoms people should look out for or the speed of the poison touching communities as it moves across the world.
–No federal or state health agency was working around the clock to ensure everyone exposed would receive critical health care if needed, regardless of whether they’re insured.
I invite you to read or reread the article we reprinted on our web from the New York Times authored by Ana Parras a local activist in TX.
In Texas and across the country, the E.P.A.’s gutting of the Chemical Disaster Rule is a matter of life or death.
While families across the country celebrated Thanksgiving with their loved ones, more than 50,000 people in Port Neches, Tex., were forced to evacuate from their homes and spend the holiday in makeshift shelters. The reason? Two explosions at the Texas Petroleum Chemical plant sent flames into the sky, injured eight people, and released plumes of butadiene, a carcinogen, into the air.
The disaster erupted six days after the Trump administration gutted Obama-era regulations meant to improve safety at 12,000 chemical plants around the country.
It’s too soon to say whether these now abandoned rules would have made a difference in Port Neches. But there is no question that the communities that surround these thousands of plants are less safe now.
This regulatory rollback gives chemical plants across the country a free pass, in pursuit of greater profits, to operate in a way that endangers families and workers.
There are over 2,500 chemical facilities in the Houston area. Manchester, the neighborhood where Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services works, is among those most affected by this negligence. There are 30 chemical plants and waste sites in the Manchester area that report to the Environmental Protection Agency. When an explosion happens, nearby neighborhoods, mostly Latinx and people of color, are exposed to this toxicity.
And these toxic blasts are not infrequent. The last chemical explosion in Houston to garner national attention was in March at the Intercontinental Terminals Co., a few miles east of Manchester. This explosion led to high benzene levels in the air, school closures and community shelter-in-place orders for days: stay where you are, turn off air conditioning. Some advisories told people to put a plastic tarp over their windows, sealed with duct tape, to prevent air from coming in.
Federal regulations were supposed to protect us. For years, organizations like United Steelworkers, Greenpeace and dozens of other community and environmental organizations pressured the E.P.A. to make chemical disaster prevention a priority.
The turning point happened in 2013 when an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex., 200 miles northwest of Houston, killed 15 people and injured over 260.
Later that year, President Barack Obama signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to create a task force. What emerged was the Chemical Disaster Rule, a proposal to improve plant safety and protect surrounding communities, which the former E.P.A. administrator Gina McCarthy approved one month before President Trump took office.
Two months later, the Trump administration blocked the regulations from taking effect, and now the E.P.A. has released a final rule that eviscerates the Obama-era requirements. The agency rescinded major accident prevention provisions, including requirements to consider safer technology, audits of accidents by outside parties and “root cause” analyses of accidents.
While Texas has the largest number of chemical facilities in the country, Illinois, California, Iowa and Louisiana are riddled with them, too. As The Houston Chronicle has documented, no state is spared from having at least one facility that could have toxic or flammable chemical accidents with consequences that extend beyond the site.
The E.P.A. calls these communities — areas that could be affected by a release from a chemical accident — “vulnerable zones.” One in three children in America attends a school in a vulnerable zone. This means that over 19 million children are at risk of exposure to the harmful chemicals that these plants use, store and can emit when they produce plastics, pesticides, adhesives and other products.
Our neighborhoods in Houston are a case in point. The oil and gas facilities and chemical plants along the 52-mile Houston Ship Channel have turned the air in Harris County into a public health hazard, significantly increasing the likelihood of residents’ developing cancer and respiratory problems — and shortening the lives of children. Children living near the Houston Ship Channel are 56 percent more likely to develop leukemia than those who live more than 10 miles away.
To me this issue is personal. Yes, explosions from chemical facilities can be deadly. But the long-term impact of exposure to toxic chemicals also kills. In 2016, I was found to have hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a rare autoimmune system disorder that arises from breathing in dust or toxins repeatedly. The doctors blamed indoor air, but I am convinced that exposure to chemicals in Houston led to my condition. In this town, there’s little distinction between the air indoors and what’s outside.
When traveling — I am now at the U.N. Climate talks in Madrid — I bring a portable oxygen machine in case I need it. I am unable to walk long distances, and I move slowly because of my shortness of breath. Public speaking is difficult, as is any exertion. My life expectancy is not long (10 years, one doctor told me). I hope it is more.
In my family, lung diseases are the norm. My diagnosis came the same year that my father, Gregorio V. García, died of lung cancer at 79. He worked in the Asarco Refinery in Corpus Christi, Tex., and was a member of United Steelworkers for 30 years. Workers in these refineries are the first exposed to toxic substances. Many, like him, have died of cancer.
Plants like the nearby Valero facility emit a slew of poisonous chemicals like benzene and hydrogen cyanide into our neighborhoods. Far too often, they fail to meet Clean Air Act requirements.
During Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, I felt what it was like to breathe in a concentrated amount of toxic air. On the day of the worst flooding, my husband and I drove his pickup truck into Manchester to document what was happening at the Valero refinery. We saw water running from Valero into Hartman Park, where children gather to play baseball and soccer, and down the streets we knew well. As we drove, we had to cover our nose and mouth with our hands. My lips turned numb. The odor was so strong that it made me nauseated.
Three days later we found out that we had driven into one of the largest benzene spills. Benzene is clear, colorless and flammable. To date, this spill has not been adequately addressed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
In Houston, we struggle to get chemical facilities to follow the law. We ask our state to protect us from chemicals that no one should breathe. Now the federal government is ending safeguards that the E.P.A. only a few years ago said the industry needed to protect the lives of workers, emergency medical workers and communities like mine.
My life should not be a pawn for leveraging industry profits. Nor should those of my neighbors and their children. Families and workers in these neighborhoods deserve to be safe.
As disasters continue to happen, we — those most affected, those who breathe and live and play in toxicity — condemn the E.P.A.’s decision to repeal the Chemical Disaster Rule. We are denied basic health protections simply because the industry does not want to invest in our safety.
Families and workers across the country should not have to pay the ultimate cost of this administration’s refusal to do its job: our lives.
Ana Parras is a co-executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (@tejasbarrios).
Category: Backyard Talk
CHEJ Blog
Categories
The Coronavirus Outbreak
This blog was recently published by Hesperian Health Guides.
Coronavirus is all over the news and people are looking for how-to, actionable information on surviving the pandemic. But limiting advice and actions to improving individual or community hygiene is only washing our hands of the problem. To successfully defeat the looming epidemic, we have to change a health system that places profit over health. We have to recognize and address the political, social and economic factors –the social determinants of health — that govern how health or illness moves through our communities.
Most of what to do immediately about Coronavirus (or COVID-19) is already known: Wash your hands; don’t touch your face so often; stay home if you are sick. Clean surfaces often that are touched by multiple people. Since the virus is mostly transmitted by respiration, cough or sneeze into your elbow, wear a mask if you are sick or around sick people, or stay about 6 feet away from people you speak with if you think the virus is active in your area. (See our COVID-19 Fact Sheet for more details.)
While individual action is important, it will not stop an epidemic, only collective action will. We have to start acting like the connections among us are not routes to transmit disease, but the channels through which we can defeat it. There are many actions and policies we can demand to lower the possibility that COVID-19 becomes epidemic in the United States:
1) Guaranteed income for people affected by the virus.
Most of us live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford to stay home from work without pay. Quarantines are difficult enough for people without making them worse by causing financial disaster.
The federal government has refused to require employers to pay sick leave, and even states that do — California requires only 3 days a year – would not cover the time necessary for your quarantine, much less if your quarantine is because someone else in your household is sick. And how would people with the lowest wages survive, those in service or production jobs who cannot telecommute (as our health advisors so blithely suggest), if their employers shut down? If schools are closed to prevent disease from spreading, how will adults stay home with children and not lose their jobs or income?
In places like the Bay Area, where housing costs take the lion’s share of monthly expenses, it may also be necessary to declare mortgage holidays and a moratorium on evictions.
2) Free access to testing and treatment.
The cost of health care already stops people from getting timely testing and treatment for health problems. With coronavirus, our health system is a prescription for an epidemic.
The CDC bungled producing testing kits for COVID-19, and hospitals still have a shortage. People who have been tested are being charged thousands of dollars. When asked about treatment costs, HHS Secretary Azar refused to say treatment would be affordable: “We can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest.”
If the US continues on the health-care–for-profit path, it insures the epidemic will be more widespread and more severe. Free access to testing and treatment for coronavirus is essential, as it is for other health conditions. Demand access to care now and in November don’t vote for anyone who doesn’t support Medicare for All – they’re basically telling you that saving your life is too expensive.
3) Prioritize reaching the most vulnerable communities
People of color and low-income communities have more exposure to disease and less access to health care facilities. We can’t perpetuate this injustice in our coronavirus response.
People already sick, especially those with breathing problems, have a higher chance of getting severely ill and dying from COVID-19. Environmental racism places factories and freeways disproportionately in poor communities of color, leading, for example, to 20% more asthma among African Americans. By prioritizing reaching communities marginalized by the medical system with necessary supplies, testing and treatment, we can slow the epidemic and begin to undo the deadly relationship of ill health, inequity and injustice.
These are all achievable demands. To win them, we have to organize pressure on our local, state and national governments from our neighborhood organizations, unions, churches, professional groups, and within the political parties that are contending for our votes this election year.
We can also organize locally to care for each other:
–Reorient your Neighborhood Watch or Earthquake Preparedness group to check up on your neighbors. Find out who is sick and who needs help.
–Expand the reach of Meals on Wheels and other such programs to feed those in quarantine.
–Volunteer and train others to be community health outreach workers to help answer questions and prepare your neighborhood for the coronavirus.
–Compensate “gig workers” who are the human backbone of food and supplies order and delivery apps for the time and disinfection supplies they need to safely support people stuck at home in quarantine.
What really stands out in the face of an epidemic like coronavirus is our leaders’ antagonism to the concept of “the public good” — unless it’s profitable, it just shouldn’t exist. Our public health systems have been weakened by millions of dollars of budget cuts, an opposition to regulation of both pollution and greed, and the refusal to build or maintain common infrastructure. If we are going to survive coronavirus with a minimum of deaths, we need to replace our health-for-profit system with one that recognizes that health is a human right.
Categories
Environmental Racism & Injustice
Blog by Joy Barua
Credit: GERALD HERBERT / AP
The color of our skin or where we live shouldn’t determine the outcome of our health. Unfortunately, that is not the case for a large portion of the population both domestically and internationally. Environmental racism and justice are critical issues of modern society, one that often gets overlooked and gets buried by the government.
Various studies in the past have linked exposure to pollution that is often linked with racial segregation. Those living in segregated areas are more like to be exposed to pollutants. A study conducted in 2012 Environmental Inequality in Exposures to Airborne Particulate Matter Components in the United States https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3546368/
found that exposure to particulate matter (PM) is higher amongst those of color than whites. The study looked at exposure to various components in which both Hispanic and Blacks had a higher amount of exposure compared to whites. The study also looked at exposure based on Socioeconomic Status (SES) and the result finds that persons with lower SES were significantly more exposed to higher levels of PM than those with higher SES.
There are many other studies similar to the one mentioned that found both Blacks and Hispanics have a higher amount of exposure compared to whites. However, African Americans have a higher chance of being exposed to pollution from the emissions of factories due to the placement of these facilities in minority neighborhoods.
Credit: Jon Hrusa/EPA
Environmental health is not only about being exposed to toxic components but also about the surroundings of a person’s living and working conditions. Black people are some of the most vulnerable population when it comes to neighborhood and community disparity. This is prominent in South Africa where the living and social conditions for blacks are far more challenging compared to whites as stated by Robert Bullard in his book The Quest for Environmental Justice. In South Africa, whites make more money while paying less tax while black people are making less money while paying higher taxes.
The corrupted political system in South Africa also favors whites more than blacks. As a result, black peoples are almost being pushed out and being forced to live under cruel circumstances such as living near power and sewage plants. As a result, they are exposed to more hazardous substances. Blacks in South Africa also face neighborhood disparity as there are more parks and recreation created for those living in the white neighborhood compared to blacks. Black people in South Africa are also exposed to workplace disparity as they work in some of the most unsafe work conditions under the reconstruction and development program (RDP).
Credit: Tracy Loeffelholz Dunn / The Nation. Shutterstock images
Similar situations are also prevalent here in the states where some African Americans are living without modern sanitation and access to clean water. Flint’s water is a perfect example of that where a town with a majority black population does not still have access to clean water after the city switched its water source to the Flint River. As I mentioned earlier that people of color are more likely to be living near hazardous-waste facilities, but another report states that people of color are exposed to a level of nitrogen dioxide—which emanates from cars and industrial sources as stated in the article Race Best Predicts Whether You Live Near Pollution https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/race-best-predicts-whether-you-live-near-pollution/
While the EPA had acknowledged and made progress on the issue of environmental racism and injustice, the current administration has dismantled much of the work that had been completed. It started with President Trump placing Scott Pruitt as the new EPA administrator leading to the dismantling of previous federal-environmental justice work. Further changes are taking place as those scientists that have been working on and has extensive knowledge of environmental justice are now either being fired or replaced by the current administration as reported by The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/the-trump-administration-finds-that-environmental-racism-is-real/554315/
Thus, burying the issue of Environmental racism and injustice in our country!
Blog by Sharon Franklin
Credit: Kate DeCiccio y Rose Jaffe (artists), Department of Public Works Murals DC Project
On January 20, 2020, El’gin Avila, MPH, CPH, a PhD student studying Industrial Hygiene at the University of Minnesota and the founder of Equitable Health Solutions published an article in Environmental Health News “Beyond coffee and condos: Black and brown families displaced and erased” https://www.ehn.org/gentrification-in-us-cities-2644882255.html.
He reported that in cities across the United States, displacement of long-time residents and their culture, and their exclusion from community decision-making is creating a public health crisis. He gave an example of when he lived in the DC Metro area, he witnessed the gentrification, subtle ethnic cleansing, and displacement of neighborhoods of color from one of the historically blackest cities in America. Avila, sited a neighborhood in DC that he frequented near the Navy Yard and remembered a mural of a Black family on a wall in a playground. Credit: Kate DeCiccio y Rose Jaffe (artists), Department of Public Works Murals DC Project
This was a neighborhood landmark for him, and then in the summer of 2019, it was gone. Now, in its place was a new development.
Like so many other communities (i.e. New York City, Detroit and San Francisco) that are also undergoing a similar transition as the Navy Yard, where Black and Brown families are being displaced and replaced by an influx of usually white, affluent, college-educated migrants under the guise of urban revitalization. Those displaced communities are often thrown into a cycle of instability and forced to combat disruptions in health care access, loss of community support networks, and additional financial and mental distress.
Waverly Place in Chinatown, San Francisco. (Credit: Russell Mondy/flickr)
However, there are communities who have survived this gentrification and displacement, such as Chinatown in San Francisco. Why..?? Because, of the Chinatown Rezoning Plan https://www.urbandisplacement.org/sites/default/files/images/urbandisplacementproject_policycasestudy_chinatown_april2016.pdf , which was implemented to protect the community from being re-designed by property developers. The result has been a community that currently retains its culture and its people.
Unfortunately, the current federal administration plans are focused on property and economic development, not on the community and its residents. As displayed by Trump’s Executive Order 13878, “Establishing a White House Council on Eliminating Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing,” dated June 25, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-establishing-white-house-council-eliminating-regulatory-barriers-affordable-housing/ which will worsen this problem. This plan seeks to reverse many of the policies which protected communities like Chinatown in San Francisco.
Avila concludes by stating that he and other environmental health leaders, have a critical role to play in righting this wrong, and need to advocate for rapid change as these issues persist and grow. He also says, we have to be stewards of the public and demand greater accountability from those in office and in positions of power who can implement policies, laws, regulations and programs at the state and federal levels. Additionally, what is needed is to provide grassroots services to organizations who have the ability to listen, educate and mobilize communities that are at risk of displacement. This will help them stay in and improve their communities from the ground up and collectively echo their demand for tangible action and change.
By Gustavo Andrade, Organizing Director
The numbers are out on the Trump tax cuts, and some of them are staggering: Top polluting companies paid nothing (!) in taxes on billions of dollars of profits last year. According to a new report issued recently by the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy (ITEP, itep.org) a total of 91 corporations paid ZERO taxes in 2019.
Here are some notable examples, along with a rounded estimate of their profits in 2018:
You can find the report here: Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Year of the Trump Tax Law
If you find this new information shocking, well, so do we! At a time when resources to investigate and treat pollution-related illnesses throughout the country are so scarce, the very people responsible aren’t even paying in their fair share.
These big polluters are just some of the 91 companies who didn’t pay taxes last year. Others mentioned in the report include giants like IBM, Facebook, Eli Lilly and others. Check it out for yourself at: https://itep.org/corporate-tax-avoidance-in-the-first-year-of-the-trump-tax-law/
Categories
What is Under the Surface?
By Liz Goodiel
Across the country, there has been a growing awareness for communities affected by water and soil samples contaminated with hazardous substances, including lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxin, arsenic, and more. The presence of such dangerous chemicals have disrupted the lives of residents, children and susceptible individuals that come involuntarily into contact with them on a daily basis. The concern comes when communities operate as normal with no knowledge of what could potentially be sitting below the surface.
In 2018, a community on the western side of Atlanta discovered unhealthy levels of lead in their soil. The contamination was discovered when Emory University’s PhD student Sam Peters, conducted an investigation on the presence of heavy metals in the soil of residential gardens. As the research project grew, Emory students tested the soil for the presence of lead, in addition to a number of other heavy metal and found levels of lead exceeding the EPA’s residential screening level. Maintaining a personal garden is very popular on the west side of Atlanta, with over 160 families participating in the practice. Residents have in fact been encouraged to garden as a way to provide low-income families with a source of healthy and sustainable food options.
Two years later, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken to testing and digging up contaminated soils for cleanup. Located west of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the lead investigation covers 368 properties over a span of 35 city blocks. Although it has not been confirmed, the EPA has speculated that the source of the contamination is the result of properties having been constructed on top of slag, a by-product of smelting, or the melting of metals, that leaves behind an array of heavy metals.
According to the EPA, lead exposure can lead to long-term nerve damage, increased blood pressure, reproductive problems, and hearing and vision impairments. Among children, lead poisoning can cause damage to the brain and nervous system, liver and kidney damage, developmental delays, behavioral problems and in extreme cases, death. The question that arises from the discovery of such high levels of lead in the soil is how long people have been exposed to the dangerous chemical through the consumption of gardened produce, children playing on top of contaminated soil and everyday proximity inhalation.
The question that also arises is how far the contamination can actually be spread and how many additional families could be affected? As part of the EPA cleanup project, many residential trees have been removed, resulting in increased instances of flooding. Although there are plans to replace removed trees and shrubs, flooding could spread the lead contamination to areas outside the site’s boundaries. Families outside the boundaries could potentially be at risk of contamination if they have not already been contaminated.
Soil and water contamination continues to be a growing concern across the country from operating or abandoned facilities, landfills, mining operations, pipelines, etc. Community members and susceptible populations (children, the elderly, pregnant women, etc.) are consistently exposed to the dangers of hazardous pollutants. Areas such as Atlanta, Georgia, Flint, Michigan and Asheville, North Carolina, to name a few, continue to work for the clean up of their communities. It is important to continue to encourage the appropriate and accurate testing of water and soil samples that people are exposed to on a daily basis and to monitor and enforce the safe cleanup of all communities.
Families within the Atlanta area are continuing to sign up for the testing of their properties and to have their children tested for possible lead poisoning.
For more information or questions on lead testing please contact our Science Director, Stephen Lester at slester@chej.org.
Photo credit: Curtis Compton for AJC
The federal house of representatives passed a bill that would designate certain types of PFAS “hazardous” under Superfund. (PFAS are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, man-made chemicals.) Many of our friends on capital hill sponsored this bill and voted in favor.
Trump has been very clear that he has no intentions of signing the bill if it was ever to get through the Senate and land on his desk. But what is the bill really about? It’s about what to do about this chemical that is showing up all across the country in drinking water. It is also a backdoor way to set a safe level or standard for PFAS in drinking water and for the Superfund program to cleanup and hold accountable those who are responsible for the pollution.
As this idea was being described to me by congressional staff this past summer, I just scratched my head. The Superfund program HAS NO MONEY. In fact, there are 34 unfunded Superfund sites that are shovel ready that can’t afford a shovel. This is the largest number of unfunded shovel ready sites, meaning everything is ready to begin cleanup, in decades if not longer.
The recent bill authorizes $800 million to fund infrastructure upgrades that reduce PFAS exposure and to local entities for cleanups. Again, I just scratch my head. Does Congress really think that amount of money is enough to clean up all the PFSA contaminated lands, water and dumpsites? There are thousands of places where towns, cities and states are concerned about this chemical impacting people’s drinking water.
How exactly does this bill work with the 1,3000 plus Superfund sites, some that have waited for decades to get testing or clean up plans. Trump gave Superfund in his EPA budget $2,878 million for the entire program why does congress think he would be willing to give PFAS $800 million?
Is this legislation about dumping a serious public health problem into a deep hole (Superfund) so no one can be held responsible? The Superfund program should be used to cleanup the country’s most dangerous sites, not serve as a dumping ground for serious complicated problems Congress can’t or doesn’t want to deal with.
By Lois Marie Gibbs, Founder of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice
Not too long ago, a local leader in a community in Nevada asked if I could review a set of water testing data. The sample was taken from a water storage tank that provides drinking water to the town where she lives. The town had painted the inside of the storage tank, but now the water has a strong chemical odor and four volatile chemicals were found in the water sample.
The concentration of all four chemicals in the water was below the federal drinking water standards and as far as the town was concerned, the conversation was over. The water was safe to drink. But is it really? What’s the basis for saying this?
Federal drinking water standards are based on exposure to a single substance in isolation of any other risks and reflect only a limited exposure, typically one day, from a single route of exposure, ingestion. But this is not how people are typically exposed which is to multiple chemicals at the same time. The federal standards do not address the cumulative risks posed by exposure to multiple chemicals over time. Further, these standards fail to address potential synergistic effects which are adverse health effects that are greater than would be predicted or expected based on exposure to individual chemicals alone or in combination.
Consequently, estimating risks posed by exposure to multiple chemicals in drinking water using federal drinking water standards underestimates the true risks people face drinking and using this water on a regular basis. Scientifically, we do not know how much these other factors add to the risks a person faces when drinking water with multiple contaminants. Even though each of the four chemicals in this example were found at concentrations below the federal drinking water standards, this does not mean that there is no risk when consuming or using this water. It does mean that science cannot inform this question.
Yet you hear all time when tests results are interpreted by government agencies that there is no cause for alarm. The standards are used like the proverbial line in the sand. On the one side, people are safe, and on the other, there’s endless debate over what the numbers mean. In truth, it’s not that simple.
In this case, each of the four chemicals found in the water affect the central nervous system and the liver. This means that these organ systems are all targeted simultaneously by each of these four substances. The health impact on the central nervous system (CNS) and the liver resulting from exposure to all four of these substances at the same time is difficult to judge because there is little or no information on exposure to multiple chemicals simultaneously. In addition to these targeted effects on the nervous system and the liver, these chemicals pose other specific health risks whether its skin irritation, the ability of the body to fight infection, or damage to the kidney or the heart. In many cases, some chemicals are considered carcinogens, that is, exposure increases the risk of developing cancer. The EPA’s health goal for exposure to all suspect carcinogens in drinking water is “zero” indicating that any exposure to this substance increases the risk of developing cancer over time. But EPA adjusts the health goal to reflect the realities of setting a drinking water standard at a concentration of “zero.”
In addition, because all these substances are volatile, they will evaporate into the air when a person takes a shower. One study compared the risk posed by taking a 15-minute shower versus normal consumption of drinking water and found that the risk of taking a 15-minute shower was greater than drinking the water (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0048969785903493?via%3Dihub). This risk is not included the federal drinking water standard.
While the concentration of these substances in the water may be below the federal drinking water standards, there is significant uncertainty about the cumulative risks posed by simultaneous exposure to these four volatile chemicals in drinking water, especially over time.
This is just one example of how difficult it is to interpret the results of water testing. This situation is quite common, whether it’s contaminants in drinking water, chemicals in ambient air or contaminants in soil. Interpreting air and soil testing is even more difficult because there are no federal standards that define what levels are acceptable and what are not. Instead, EPA uses guideline values that are not enforceable and subject to political whims.
CHEJ can you interpret the results of any testing results you’re concerned about. Contact us if you have test results you need help interpreting.
Opinion NYT In Texas and across the country, the E.P.A.’s gutting of the Chemical Disaster Rule is a matter of life or death.
By While families across the country celebrated Thanksgiving with their loved ones, more than 50,000 people in Port Neches, Tex., were forced to evacuate from their homes and spend the holiday in makeshift shelters. The reason? Two explosions at the Texas Petroleum Chemical plant sent flames into the sky, injured eight people, and released plumes of butadiene, a carcinogen, into the air.
The disaster erupted six days after the Trump administration gutted Obama-era regulations meant to improve safety at 12,000 chemical plants around the country.
It’s too soon to say whether these now abandoned rules would have made a difference in Port Neches. But there is no question that the communities that surround these thousands of plants are less safe now.
This regulatory rollback gives chemical plants across the country a free pass, in pursuit of greater profits, to operate in a way that endangers families and workers.
There are over 2,500 chemical facilities in the Houston area. Manchester, the neighborhood where Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services works, is among those most affected by this negligence. There are 30 chemical plants and waste sites in the Manchester area that report to the Environmental Protection Agency. When an explosion happens, nearby neighborhoods, mostly Latinx and people of color, are exposed to this toxicity.
And these toxic blasts are not infrequent. The last chemical explosion in Houston to garner national attention was in March at the Intercontinental Terminals Co., a few miles east of Manchester. This explosion led to high benzene levels in the air, school closures and community shelter-in-place orders for days: stay where you are, turn off air conditioning. Some advisories told people to put a plastic tarp over their windows, sealed with duct tape, to prevent air from coming in.
Federal regulations were supposed to protect us. For years, organizations like United Steelworkers, Greenpeace and dozens of other community and environmental organizations pressured the E.P.A. to make chemical disaster prevention a priority.
The turning point happened in 2013 when an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex., 200 miles northwest of Houston, killed 15 people and injured over 260.
Later that year, President Barack Obama signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to create a task force. What emerged was the Chemical Disaster Rule, a proposal to improve plant safety and protect surrounding communities, which the former E.P.A. administrator Gina McCarthy approved one month before President Trump took office.
Two months later, the Trump administration blocked the regulations from taking effect, and now the E.P.A. has released a final rule that eviscerates the Obama-era requirements. The agency rescinded major accident prevention provisions, including requirements to consider safer technology, audits of accidents by outside parties and “root cause” analyses of accidents.
While Texas has the largest number of chemical facilities in the country, Illinois, California, Iowa and Louisiana are riddled with them, too. As The Houston Chronicle has documented, no state is spared from having at least one facility that could have toxic or flammable chemical accidents with consequences that extend beyond the site.
The E.P.A. calls these communities — areas that could be affected by a release from a chemical accident — “vulnerable zones.” One in three children in America attends a school in a vulnerable zone. This means that over 19 million children are at risk of exposure to the harmful chemicals that these plants use, store and can emit when they produce plastics, pesticides, adhesives and other products.
Our neighborhoods in Houston are a case in point. The oil and gas facilities and chemical plants along the 52-mile Houston Ship Channel have turned the air in Harris County into a public health hazard, significantly increasing the likelihood of residents’ developing cancer and respiratory problems — and shortening the lives of children. Children living near the Houston Ship Channel are 56 percent more likely to develop leukemia than those who live more than 10 miles away.
To me this issue is personal. Yes, explosions from chemical facilities can be deadly. But the long-term impact of exposure to toxic chemicals also kills. In 2016, I was found to have hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a rare autoimmune system disorder that arises from breathing in dust or toxins repeatedly. The doctors blamed indoor air, but I am convinced that exposure to chemicals in Houston led to my condition. In this town, there’s little distinction between the air indoors and what’s outside.
When traveling — I am now at the U.N. Climate talks in Madrid — I bring a portable oxygen machine in case I need it. I am unable to walk long distances, and I move slowly because of my shortness of breath. Public speaking is difficult, as is any exertion. My life expectancy is not long (10 years, one doctor told me). I hope it is more.
In my family, lung diseases are the norm. My diagnosis came the same year that my father, Gregorio V. García, died of lung cancer at 79. He worked in the Asarco Refinery in Corpus Christi, Tex., and was a member of United Steelworkers for 30 years. Workers in these refineries are the first exposed to toxic substances. Many, like him, have died of cancer.
Plants like the nearby Valero facility emit a slew of poisonous chemicals like benzene and hydrogen cyanide into our neighborhoods. Far too often, they fail to meet Clean Air Act requirements.
During Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, I felt what it was like to breathe in a concentrated amount of toxic air. On the day of the worst flooding, my husband and I drove his pickup truck into Manchester to document what was happening at the Valero refinery. We saw water running from Valero into Hartman Park, where children gather to play baseball and soccer, and down the streets we knew well. As we drove, we had to cover our nose and mouth with our hands. My lips turned numb. The odor was so strong that it made me nauseated.
Three days later we found out that we had driven into one of the largest benzene spills. Benzene is clear, colorless and flammable. To date, this spill has not been adequately addressed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
In Houston, we struggle to get chemical facilities to follow the law. We ask our state to protect us from chemicals that no one should breathe. Now the federal government is ending safeguards that the E.P.A. only a few years ago said the industry needed to protect the lives of workers, emergency medical workers and communities like mine.
My life should not be a pawn for leveraging industry profits. Nor should those of my neighbors and their children. Families and workers in these neighborhoods deserve to be safe.
As disasters continue to happen, we — those most affected, those who breathe and live and play in toxicity — condemn the E.P.A.’s decision to repeal the Chemical Disaster Rule. We are denied basic health protections simply because the industry does not want to invest in our safety.
Families and workers across the country should not have to pay the ultimate cost of this administration’s refusal to do its job: our lives.
Ana Parras is a co-executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (@tejasbarrios).
By Sharon Franklin
On January 2, 2020, Ellen Knickmeyer, Matthew Brow and Ed White of the Associated Press, reported that the Trump Administration has built up the biggest backlog of unfunded toxic Superfund Sites. There are 34 sites that are “shovel ready” to be cleaned up, only the agency does not have the funds to do it. The 2019 figures were quietly released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the winter holidays. CHEJ has been asking for this list since July of last year.
Congress created the Superfund program in 1980 after the Love Canal episode and other notorious pollution cases to provide funds to pay for cleanup of abandoned contaminated sites where no responsible party was identified. The intent was to hold polluters responsible for cleanup costs or provide taxpayer money when no responsible party can be identified. The trust fund was financed by fees, referred to as the “Polluter Pays Fees,” that were charged to companies that used hazardous chemicals. Unfortunately, EPA stopped collecting the fees in 1995 and the fund ran out in 2003. Since that time, the cleanup of Superfund sites has been paid for by the American taxpayers. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) has prepared a bill to reinstate the fees, but he has not yet introduced the bill to Congress.
Meanwhile, communities like St. Clair Shores, Michigan are not getting their Superfund site cleaned up. Violet Donoghue, a resident of St. Clair Shores said, “There hasn’t been a sense of urgency.” She further said the-at the last word from EPA was that soil would be removed from the front of her house. “Now when they say they’re cleaning it, I say, ‘OK, give me the date’”. Meanwhile, toxic PCBs have poisoned some local soil, water and fish. St. Clair is one of the 34 Superfund sites where cleanup projects have languished for lack of funding in 2019.
In early 2019, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told a Senate environment committee, “We are in the process of cleaning up some of the nation’s largest, most complex sites and returning them to productive use.” However, this does not include the 34 unfunded projects in 17 states and Puerto Rico as noted by two former EPA officials who worked on Superfund. “They’re misleading Congress and the public about the funds that are needed to really protect the public from exposure to the toxic chemicals,” said Elizabeth Southerland former Director of Science and Technology in the Water Office. Judith Enck, former EPA Regional Northeastern Administrator called the unfunded sites a “regulatory failure.”
When the EPA was asked how funds were spent, and why the agency didn’t ask Congress for more funding to deal with the growing backlog, EPA spokeswoman Maggie Sauerhage stated that EPA’s Superfund program “will continue to prioritize new construction projects based on which sites present the greatest risk to human health and the environment.” Sauerhage also stated in an email, “Further, the agency maintains the authority to respond to and fund emergencies at these sites if there is an imminent threat to human health and the environment.” EPA did not directly respond to questions about the backlog of 34 unfunded Superfund cleanup projects which was posted on its website on December 26, 2019. The information about these sites can be found here.
The large number of unfunded sites makes clear the need to introduce Pallone’s bill to Congress and to reinstate the polluter pays fees.
Photo Credit: 2015 The Macomb Daily File Photo Clinton Township, MI