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Public well being advocates are optimistic {that a} Kamala Harris and Tim Walz victory within the US presidential election this November will result in additional regulation of poisonous “forever chemicals,” so-called as a result of they will take a long time and even centuries to interrupt down after they get launched into the atmosphere. Generally known as PFAS, they’re a category of about 15,000 chemical substances usually used to make merchandise that resist water, stains, and warmth. They’re known as eternally chemical substances as a result of they don’t naturally break down, and might accumulate in people and the atmosphere. The chemical substances are linked to most cancers, kidney illness, liver issues, immune problems, delivery defects, and different severe well being issues. In April, the EPA set new limits on 6 eternally chemical substances which can be discovered in lots of public ingesting water provides.
Final 12 months, as governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz signed daring laws prohibiting using poisonous PFAS throughout a spread of widespread shopper items from menstrual merchandise to meals packaging — a measure that’s thought-about by public well being advocates to be among the many “strongest bans in the world.” Based on The Guardian, Walz labored carefully with victims of PFAS air pollution because the laws moved ahead via the Minnesota legislature. Sarah Doll, director of Safer States, which advocates for harder rules on poisonous chemical substances on the state stage, mentioned, “He has lived experience with the families … and just having that could bring a deeper understanding of the complexities and the challenges that we face.”
Although eternally chemical substances are added to 1000’s of shopper merchandise, the federal authorities has achieved little to manage how they’re used. As an alternative, states lately have begun enacting their very own bans on PFAS in shopper items. Minnesota’s 2023 regulation prohibits the chemical substances in 13 product classes, together with clothes, kids’s objects, and cookware. Walz drew reward as a nationwide chief on the difficulty partly for signing the invoice regardless of intense opposition from 3M, one of many world’s greatest firms and a serious producer of PFAS chemical substances. The truth that it’s headquartered in Minnesota made the motion taken by that state’s legislature and governor all of the extra extraordinary.
There are some issues that the regulation in Minnesota shouldn’t be broad sufficient to cowl harmful new PFAS, however Doll mentioned there was all the time some uncertainty within the implementation of poisonous chemical legal guidelines. “There is nothing I heard or saw or read in this that is a dagger that is going to undermine the potential for this to be an effective, strong law,” Doll mentioned. She added that Walz additionally signed laws limiting using different poisonous chemical substances, like flame retardants.
Harris, in the meantime, has drawn broad reward from environmental teams for taking up huge oil. As California’s lawyer common, she pursued prison fees towards a few of that {industry}’s polluters and defeated an Obama administration proposal to permit fracking off the coast of California. The Heart for Environmental Well being in Oakland, California, praised her for serving to to steer opposition in 2013 to an overhaul of the federal Poisonous Substances Management Act pushed by the chemical {industry}. It was finally defeated and a stronger model rewritten and handed a number of years later.
Throughout her tenure as San Francisco’s district lawyer, she established what was among the many first environmental justice items within the nation. Harris was additionally a part of the Biden administration’s 2021 PFAS Street Map, a first-of-its-kind complete plan to rein in air pollution which led to the institution of strict new limits for the chemical substances in ingesting water applied earlier this 12 months. The company can also be starting to think about air air pollution, meals contamination, and extra environment friendly approaches to regulating the 1000’s of PFAS compounds available on the market.
A second Trump presidency can be doubtless spell the top of these efforts and any new rules which can be within the works. A Harris-Walz administration would most likely proceed the Biden administration’s insurance policies, a number of former EPA officers informed The Guardian. “A new administration will always review the prior administration’s policies,” mentioned Walter Mugdan, a former EPA deputy regional administrator. “Biden and Harris seem to me to be fairly aligned on environmental issues, so I would expect only minor overall changes versus a wholesale change in emphasis or direction.”
Trade Pivots To “Attack The Science” Method
In June, the chemical {industry}, the ingesting water {industry}, and the Nationwide Affiliation of Producers filed go well with within the US Courtroom of Appeals for the DC circuit to dam the brand new EPA guidelines designed to restrict eternally chemical substances in ingesting water. They declare the scientists on the EPA are a bunch of anti-industry stooges who exit of their solution to provide you with junk science to fulfill some amorphous socialist plot cooked up by George Soros and a coterie of childless cat girls. In different phrases, it’s the identical threadbare technique of FUD developed by the tobacco {industry} to defend itself towards vile assaults by do-gooders and busybodies who needed to stop folks from having fun with the well being advantages of sucking tobacco smoke into their lungs. That very same technique has additionally been used to denigrate local weather science and electrical vehicles. Something that threatens income should be resisted in any respect prices. The truth is, it seems the chemical {industry} is properly conscious of the hazard from utilizing its merchandise.
“The chemical industry and water utilities publicly declare their commitment to safe drinking water, yet now they turn around and claim in court that there is no law, no science, and no need for rules that protect drinking water from toxic PFAS pollution. They have long downplayed how dangerous these forever chemicals are. It’s outrageous,” mentioned Erik Olson, senior strategic director for well being on the Pure Assets Protection Council. “Duplicitous and self-serving arguments by the chemical industry and water utilities must no longer dictate whether millions of families can trust the water from their kitchen tap. People need these EPA standards to protect their drinking water and their families’ health.”
“The science is clear. These PFAS have been well-studied and linked to multiple serious health harms. Water utilities and the chemical industry are sowing doubt despite the overwhelming weight of evidence that forever chemicals are a threat to human health,” mentioned Dr. Anna Reade, Director of PFAS Advocacy at NRDC.
The Guardian says it has reviewed paperwork that present the chemical and water industries are hiring scientists who care extra about cash than fact to buttress their problem to the EPA rule on eternally chemical substances. Specifically, it says a month after go well with was filed, Michael Dourson, a toxicologist who receives some funding from chemical producers, despatched an e mail to scientists, consultants, and attorneys detailing a plan to develop and publish so-called peer reviewed science for chemical corporations to make use of as proof towards PFAS limits.
Present and former Environmental Safety Company workers who reviewed the paperwork allege that scientists like Dourson are engineering an ethically questionable plan designed to generate uncertainty in regards to the “robust” science underpinning the PFAS limits. These plans are “not a valid approach to science,” mentioned Maria Doa, a former EPA danger evaluation supervisor now with the Environmental Protection Fund. As an alternative, she mentioned they had been a authorized technique out of the {industry} playbook for undoing rules. “They’re trying to undermine the EPA’s science, make it sound like there’s uncertainty where there isn’t and make it sound like there’s disagreement within the scientific community where there’s not,” Doa added. The EPA amassed a whole bunch of animal and epidemiological research earlier than issuing its new guidelines in April.
A ruling towards the boundaries would discourage regulatory motion on different poisonous chemical substances past PFAS in water, mentioned Betsy Southerland, a retired EPA water division supervisor. “This is pivotal. If a court strikes this down … then the EPA will say the bar is too high to ever regulate using the Safe Drinking Water Act.”
Dourson mentioned accusations of bias had been “disingenuous.” He as soon as labored for the EPA, however left the company to arrange what his critics characterize as a “one stop shop” for industry-friendly analysis — Toxicology Excellence for Threat Evaluation. He claimed TERA was “very much an independent, neutral science NGO.” In 2017, Trump nominated Dourson to supervise the EPA’s chemical security division, however he was compelled to withdraw his title after failing to get sufficient GOP help, partly as a result of his Senate critics alleged he ran a “Science for Sale” operation that allowed the American Chemistry Council to edit papers.
Dourson’s July e mail cites the authorized problem to the brand new rules, then provides “a couple approaches can be used to support [it], but nearly all of them require peer reviewed and published papers before serious consideration.” So his group would create scientific papers that will be developed partly on shows that industry-connected researchers, attorneys, consultants, and former Trump EPA officers gave at an October 2023 convention organized by TERA at which they honed the assault. Dourson wrote that the papers can be “published as the first issue of [a] new journal” being established to first present “support” for the authorized problem, Dourson states within the e mail, which solicits donations to assist fund the operation. “Can we count on your group to make a tax-deductible donation to get our team to publish a set of papers by the end of 2024?” he asks.
“In my 22 years spent in three regulatory programs I came to understand the games [the industry] plays, but this one astonished me because it’s unusual to be so blatant,” Penny Fenner-Crisp, a former EPA water division supervisor who labored with Dourson, informed The Guardian. That is typical of the Triumpian playbook as epitomized by the Mission 2025 playbook. Spout a fountain of lies again and again till the opposition crumbles.
The Takeaway
Perpetually chemical substances are discovered within the water that 200 million People depend on. You may suppose that will be sufficient to justify the EPA selecting to behave cautiously to guard these folks from vital well being dangers, however in America at this time, income far outweigh a number of thousand folks getting sick and dying due to the crud discovered of their water, or tens of 1000’s of kids struggling neurological injury. Chemical corporations like 3M make billions from manufacturing eternally chemical substances. How dare the federal government train its authority to guard the citizenry when doing so will damage shareholders? As well as, eliminating these eternally chemical substances will price billions of {dollars}. Who’s going to pay for that, huh?
CleanTechnica readers may be so daring as to counsel those that created the air pollution within the first place ought to pay to scrub up their mess, however that’s not how capitalism works within the trendy world. Income should be protected in each occasion; individuals are expendable. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz appear to suppose that the scales are unbalanced in favor of firms and that state of affairs must be corrected. But one more reason to vote for them in November.
