Trump’s rollback of toxic gas rules limits EPA’s authority to protect public health, analysis says | US news
The Trump administration’s new plan to repeal 2024 regulations on toxic ethylene oxide (EtO) pollution aims more broadly to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to strengthen public health protections on hazardous emissions and could result in more toxins being released into the air.
Recent research has revealed that EtO is approximately 60 times more carcinogenic than thought when final regulations were developed in 2006. In 2024, the Biden EPA adopted a rule strengthening regulations to reflect updated science and require the nation’s EtO emitters to collectively reduce their emissions by nearly 90%.
a new Harvard analysis details The administration’s move will limit the EPA’s ability to strengthen regulations if it finds that hazardous air pollutants are more hazardous than previously thought.
If the Trump EPA is successful in its legal challenge, the 2024 regulations would be rescinded, resulting in approximately 8 tons of carcinogenic gases continuing to be released largely in low-income neighborhoods. This would also make it permanently harder for the EPA to subsequently protect people from toxic air pollutants.
The move is part of the industry’s and the administration’s “broader strategy to roll back sweeping controls on toxic chemicals, especially carcinogens,” said Erik Olson, senior counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
“This sends a signal to everyone that we face a real threat and that the administration plans to dismantle cancer prevention measures,” Olson said. NRDC is among the plaintiffs lawsuit on a separate issue around the chemical.
Public health advocates say the outcome of the plan is particularly important because of how regulations on chemicals are structured. Chemicals are often approved with little scrutiny of industry claims that their substances are safe, and as with EtO, it can take decades for independent science to learn the true risk.
It would also likely roll back regulations or proposed rules on two other chemicals.
EtO is a flammable, colorless gas used to sterilize approximately 20 billion medical devices annually, including pacemakers and syringes, as well as some foods. The chemical is also a strong carcinogen when inhaled and has been linked to leukemia, among other health problems. Canceling the new rule would expose approximately 2.3 million people to toxic gas.
The 2024 Biden EPA rule, if enacted, would reduce emissions at 89 facilities. The rule would achieve this by requiring companies to use continuous monitoring and rein in fugitive emissions, among other measures. Fugitive emissions are air pollution that leaks from pipes within the factory or from places where it is not intended to escape.
According to a Harvard report, the Trump administration’s proposed termination would save companies $47 million a year. The Trump EPA has stopped calculating costs associated with cancer increases, so the societal burden is unclear.
The Clean Air Act expressly requires the EPA to conduct a “residual risk review” of toxic chemicals within eight years of being designated as hazardous pollutants. The agency first set emissions standards for EtO in 1994 and completed its remaining review in 2006, said Giancarlo Vargas, a co-author of the paper and an attorney with the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program.
Vargas said recent studies show the chemical is estimated to be 60 times more carcinogenic than levels used in the 2006 reassessment. That’s why the EPA under the Biden administration conducted an “optional” review aimed at strengthening borders and protecting public health.
But Vargas said the Clean Air Act “doesn’t really discuss whether you can do additional discretionary reviews” beyond the initial review that checks for the health impact of the pollutant. Under Biden, the EPA essentially interpreted the law as not prohibiting additional inspections, Vargas said, but the Trump administration “is now actually saying the silence means we don’t have the authority to do this again.”
Vargas added that this is a “major change” that will “rein in EPA’s ability to consider public health risks when updating standards for hazardous air pollutants.”
He said he couldn’t speak to why the EPA might want to do that and that the article examined legal strategy, but Trump didn’t take a position on whether the EPA’s actions were sound or ethical.
The agency is required under the Clean Air Act to conduct a technical review every eight years that evaluates whether the best available technology for a chemical is being used, but that does not directly involve public health issues.
Erika Kranz, supervisor of Harvard’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, said the administration’s action on EtO was “part of a broader pattern of authority that constrains the EPA’s interpretations.”
“We’ve seen EPA adopt these new legal interpretations that limit the agency’s authority in other contexts during this administration,” he said, noting the administration’s recent controversial finding of endangerment.
Kranz added that the stakes in the legal battle are particularly high because “this depends on the future, the EPA cannot accept a new interpretation of this law.”
Meanwhile, NRDC is suing to block the Trump administration from exempting EtO and other chemicals from regulations under the hazardous air pollutants rule. The president is using a provision in the law that has never been used before, which allows exemptions for national security purposes or when the technology to enforce the rule is “not available.”
NRDC claims that this move exempts approximately half of all commercial medical sterilizers from EtO standards, but the administration has not provided any evidence to support this decision.
“President Trump’s exemption of chemical facilities from regulation of hazardous air pollutants not only sacrifices the health of communities, it is also illegal and undemocratic,” NRDC senior scientist Jen Sass said in a statement.
