Wednesday, December 18: Today, the Sierra Club intervened in a Texas lawsuit, brought by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, seeking to shield from public disclosure important health and safety data relied upon by the Commission in formulating an exposure limit for ethylene oxide. Ethylene oxide is an explosive, hazardous air pollutant made from petroleum and natural gas. Exposure to the chemical is linked to a wide variety of health problems, from chronic headaches to leukemia. Of the 355 facilities across the United States that emit ethylene oxide, 60 are in Texas.
In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that ethylene oxide is "carcinogenic to humans" and calculated a new risk threshold that is 30 times lower than the previous level. Nevertheless, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has moved in the opposite direction, proposing an exposure limitation based on a risk factor that is three orders of magnitude weaker than what the EPA found appropriate in 2016.
To make matters worse, the Commission has refused to disclose vital health and safety data that it relied on in establishing its newly proposed exposure limit. After the Texas Attorney General's Office directed the Commission to disclose the data in response to the Sierra Club's public records request, the Commission filed a state court lawsuit attempting to shield the data and reports from disclosure. The Club's intervention today will help to ensure that the Commission is forced to disclose the data it has relied upon in establishing its proposal, potentially helping to debunk the validity of the Commission's analysis.