The chemical plants that dot the industrial corridors of Texas and Louisiana produce some of the most toxic pollution in the country. Companies like Celanese and Indorama Ventures emit ethylene oxide and 1,3-butadiene day and night into the air of predominantly black and Latino communities. At the start of his term running the EPA in 2021, Michael Regan promised to tackle these emissions. The agency announced a major step in that direction Tuesday when it finalized a rule to cut thousands of tons of toxic emissions and require air monitoring at more than 200 chemical plants across the country.
“We promised to listen to people suffering from pollution and act to protect them,” Regan said a press release. “Today, we’re making good on that promise with strong final standards to reduce pollution, reduce cancer risk and ensure cleaner air for nearby communities.”
This is the first time federal regulations for chemical plants have been updated in decades. The EPA expects the rule to reduce more than 6,200 tons of toxic emissions each year, and lead to reductions of more than 100 hazardous pollutants. Officials also estimated a 23,000-ton reduction per year in smog-forming volatile organic compounds, which create the brown-colored air often found in industrialized areas. The announcement follows a move in March to curb the release of ethylene oxide, a dangerous carcinogen, from facilities that sterilize medical equipment.
Some of the facilities subject to these rules, such as the Denka Performance Elastomers plant in Louisiana’s St. John the Baptist Parish, is more than half a century old. Regan has St. John on a visit a tour of pollution hotspots across the Deep South in November 2021, and promised residents they would see a reduction in Denka’s emissions of chloroprene, a toxic compound that studies have linked to cancers of the liver, lung and digestive system. But several avenues the agency has taken to tackle the plant’s pollution, including a civil rights complaint and an emergency motion, have failed to reduce the facility’s emissions.
The new rule “shows that the agency was unwilling to give up after trying other legal platforms to address the problem,” said Scott Throwe, a former EPA enforcement officer and air pollution expert.
The main chemical the rule seeks to reduce is ethylene oxide, a potent carcinogen that studies have linked to cancers of the breast and lymph nodes. Plants that emit ethylene oxide came under increased scrutiny after the EPA published a study in 2016 that found the chemical to be 30 times more toxic to adults and 60 times more toxic to children than previously thought. Ethylene oxide pollution is especially bad in the industrial suburbs of the Houston Metro Area and in Cancer Alley, the corridor of oil refineries and chemical plants on the lower Mississippi River in southeast Louisiana.
Once in place, the rule is expected to reduce both ethylene oxide and chloroprene emissions from certain processes and equipment by nearly 80 percent. One provision seeks to improve the efficiency of flares, gas-burning devices that burn off excess chemicals. Recently research has linked the practice of gas flaring to increased asthma cases in children. The regulations will also require plant operators to install monitors around the perimeter of their sites to measure concentrations of a number of cancer-causing chemicals, including ethylene oxide and vinyl chloride. If the amount of any of these chemicals is above the agency’s “action level,” plant operators will be required to determine the cause and make repairs. In a fact sheet published with the final rule, the EPA noted that a similar monitoring provision in the regulations for petroleum refineries has resulted in significant reductions in benzene levels around those facilities.
Chemical companies subject to the rule will have two years to implement the new provisions. Officials estimated the regulations would cost the chemical industry $1.8 billion over the next 14 years, the equivalent of $150 million a year.
“Most of the facilities covered by the final rule are owned by large corporations,” the agency noted. “The cost of implementing the final rule is less than 1 percent of their annual national sales.”
