The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved Chevron’s plan to create fuel made from recycled plastics, although a 203-page risk assessment suggests the plan may expose individuals to cancer-causing agents.
Numerous environmental groups are saying residents of Pascagoula, Mississippi, the location of the manufacturing plant, may be at risk of developing cancer.
Toxic fumes being released from smokestacks will endanger residents, airports, and fish populations, the organizations argue.
Chevron believes 18 new chemicals may be made from the plastics and then manufactured into fuel.
One of the fuels to be produced increases cancer risk to 1 in 4 people exposed to the carcinogen, well above the EPA’s traditional standard of 1 in 1,000,000.
“EPA made several very conservative assumptions when evaluating the lifetime cancer risk that ultimately resulted in a significant overestimate of risk for this chemical,” wrote EPA spokesperson Jeffrey Landis in an email to The Epoch Times.
“These risk estimates are likely to be higher than what actually occurs in the real world.”
“The TSCA New Chemicals Program has a short time period (up to 90 days as mandated by law) to review the safety of a new chemical substance, often with very limited data,” Landis wrote, referring to the EPA’s legal requirement to conduct safety assessments before allowing new chemicals to be introduced.
Reporting from The Epoch Times:
On June 15, the EPA proposed new rules that would require the agency’s review before the manufacturing of chemicals made from recycled-plastic feedstocks containing substances such as heavy metals (like arsenic, lead, and mercury), dioxins, phthalates, PFAS, bisphenol A (BPA), and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs). According to Mr. Landis, if finalized as proposed, this requirement would ensure fuels could not be lawfully manufactured or processed using waste-derived feedstocks containing these impurities without additional agency review. Since any of the 18 chemicals have yet to be manufactured, this requirement would also apply to them.
