Harris & Walz Expected To Take A Tougher Stance On “Forever Chemicals”

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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 many years and even centuries to interrupt down after they get launched into the atmosphere. Generally known as PFASthey’re a category of about 15,000 chemical substances usually used to make merchandise that resist water, stains, and warmth. They’re known as endlessly 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 issues, delivery defects, and different critical well being issues. In April, the EPA set new limits on 6 endlessly chemical substances which might be discovered in lots of public consuming water provides.

Final yr, as governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz signed daring laws prohibiting using poisonous PFAS throughout a spread of frequent 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 GuardianWalz labored carefully with victims of PFAS air pollution because the laws moved ahead by way of the Minnesota legislature. Sarah Doll, director of Safer States, which advocates for more durable rules on poisonous chemical substances on the state degree, stated, “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 endlessly chemical substances are added to hundreds of shopper merchandise, the federal authorities has completed little to manage how they’re used. As an alternative, states in recent times have begun enacting their very own bans on PFAS in shopper items. Minnesota’s 2023 legislation prohibits the chemical substances in 13 product classes, together with clothes, youngsters’s gadgets, and cookware. Walz drew reward as a nationwide chief on the problem partially for signing the invoice regardless of intense opposition from 3M, one of many world’s largest firms and a significant 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 legislation in Minnesota just isn’t broad sufficient to cowl harmful new PFAS, however Doll stated there was at all times 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 stated. 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 over massive oil. As California’s lawyer normal, she pursued felony prices towards a few of that {industry}’s polluters and defeated an Obama administration proposal to permit fracking off the coast of California. The Middle for Environmental Well being in Oakland, California, praised her for serving to to guide 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 models within the nation. Harris was additionally a part of the Biden administration’s 2021 PFAS Highway 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 consuming water carried out earlier this yr. The company can be starting to think about air air pollution, meals contamination, and extra environment friendly approaches to regulating the hundreds of PFAS compounds in the marketplace.

A second Trump presidency can be seemingly spell the top of these efforts and any new rules which might be within the works. A Harris-Walz administration would most likely proceed the Biden administration’s insurance policies, a number of former EPA officers advised The Guardian. “A new administration will always review the prior administration’s policies,” stated 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 consuming water {industry}, and the Nationwide Affiliation of Producers filed suit in the US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit to dam the brand new EPA guidelines designed to restrict endlessly chemical substances in consuming water. They declare the scientists on the EPA are a bunch of anti-industry stooges who exit of their approach 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 individuals 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 earnings have to be resisted in any respect prices. In actual fact, it seems the chemical {industry} is well aware of the danger 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,” stated Erik Olson, senior strategic director for well being on the Natural Resources Defense 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,” stated 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 reality to buttress their problem to the EPA rule on endlessly chemical substances. Particularly, it says a month after swimsuit 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 employees 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,” stated Maria Doa, a former EPA danger evaluation supervisor now with the Environmental Protection Fund. As an alternative, she stated they have 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 bounds would discourage regulatory motion on different poisonous chemical substances past PFAS in water, stated 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 stated accusations of bias have 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 assist, partially 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 might be developed partially 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 will probably 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, advised The Guardian. That is typical of the Triumpian playbook as epitomized by the Project 2025 playbook. Spout a fountain of lies again and again till the opposition crumbles.

The Takeaway

Ceaselessly chemical substances are discovered within the water that 200 million Americans depend on. You would possibly suppose that might be sufficient to justify the EPA selecting to behave cautiously to guard these individuals from vital well being dangers, however in America in the present day, earnings far outweigh just a few thousand individuals getting sick and dying due to the crud discovered of their water, or tens of hundreds of youngsters struggling neurological injury. Chemical corporations like 3M make billions from manufacturing endlessly 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 endlessly chemical substances will price billions of {dollars}. Who’s going to pay for that, huh?

CleanTechnica readers could 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 fashionable world. Earnings have to 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.