WOBURN, Mass. — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed banning the cancer-causing chemical trichloroethylene, which can also be discovered in client products together with car brake cleaners, furnishings care and humanities and crafts spray coating.
The transfer would finish a just about 4 decade combat to prohibit the chemical referred to as TCE, which will purpose surprising demise or kidney most cancers if an individual is uncovered to top ranges of it, and other neurological hurt even at decrease publicity over a protracted length.
EPA’s fresh risk-evaluation research discovered that up to 250 million kilos of TCE are nonetheless produced in the United States once a year. One of the primary puts the chemical raised worry used to be in Massachusetts, the place it used to be connected to infected ingesting water in town of Woburn. Two places there have been in the long run designated as huge Superfund websites. Monday’s news convention used to be held at one in all them, a location which now serves as a transportation middle.
“For far too long, TCE has left a toxic legacy in communities across America,” said Michal Freedhoff, the EPA’s assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “Today, EPA is taking a major step to protect people from exposure to this cancer-causing chemical.”
Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey, who has led the effort to ban TCE, welcomed the move.
“With this rule, we can see a future where we will no longer be manufacturing, processing and distributing a chemical known to be deadly,” Markey said. “We will no longer be exposing American families, communities and workers to a toxic chemical legacy that leaves questions, cancer and catastrophe in its wake.”
Markey called the effort personal, citing his long-time work with Anne Anderson, a resident-turned-activist whose son Jimmy died in 1981 of leukemia.
“Since Anne and I met in 1980, we have been partners in the effort to clean up Woburn, to get justice for her son, and to save other families from seeing their children fall sick as a result of contamination,” Markey said. “Thanks to the advocacy of Anne Anderson and the motion of the EPA, the technology of companies the use of communities like Woburn as dumping grounds for poisonous TCE is over.”
A 1982 lawsuit over the tainted water provide concerned 8 Woburn households, together with the Andersons. The case garnered nationwide consideration and ended in the e book and film titled “A Civil Action.”
TCE is used to make refrigerants and in solvents that take away grease from steel portions. It may be used in carpet cleaners, laundry spot removers and hoof polish for horses. The chemical gifts an “unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment” in 52 of 54 makes use of in commercial and client products, the EPA has discovered.
“I am overwhelmed that all of you are here to acknowledge everything that has happened and everything that was bad has turned good,” Anderson stated. “I owe so much to you people to keep the fight going, making sure that everybody is safe and that toxic chemicals like TCE will no longer exist.”
The proposed ban stems from a significant growth of EPA’s regulatory powers beneath a landmark 2016 legislation that overhauled laws governing tens of 1000’s of poisonous chemical substances in on a regular basis products, from family cleaners to clothes and furnishings.
The statute approved new laws for tens of 1000’s of poisonous chemical substances discovered in on a regular basis products, together with components equivalent to asbestos and TCE, that for many years had been identified to purpose most cancers however had been in large part unregulated beneath federal legislation. Known because the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, the legislation used to be meant to transparent up a hodgepodge of state laws governing chemical substances and to replace the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.
The 2016 legislation required the EPA to guage chemical substances and put in position protections towards unreasonable dangers. The company moved to prohibit asbestos closing yr and has additionally proposed banning methylene chloride, perchloroethylene and carbon tetrachloride.
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Associated Press author Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this record.
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