[Update: The public comment period is now over, but if you're reading this for the first time, read on!] On July 12, the Sierra Club signed a joint letter with several other organizations to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s (TCEQ) Toxicology Division to request a 45-day delay on its proposal to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce the Integrated Risk Information System’s (IRIS) risk factor of the carcinogenic air pollutant ethylene oxide (EtO). Despite scientific research and citizen testimonies, the TCEQ claims that EtO is not as carcinogenic as the EPA had previously reported, suggesting that more EtO emissions would not be harmful to the public. TCEQ proposes an ethylene oxide cancer risk factor 3500x weaker than the EPA’s IRIS risk factor.
Fortunately, the environmental groups were successful in securing an extra 45 days on TCEQ’s comments to the EPA. The public comment period for the Ethylene Oxide Proposed Development Support Document (DSD) was extended 45 days past the original August 12, 2019 due date, making the new due date this Thursday, September 26.
Despite this small victory, the battle against TCEQ’s EtO proposal is not over, because the TCEQ will still submit their proposal to the EPA if the fight stops here. [The comment period is now over.] It is imperative that the public demand the TCEQ to retract their suggested EtO risk value to the EPA before the comment deadline of September 26. The TCEQ needs to know that the public is aware of their actions, and Texans do not approve of their ill-conceived risk factor. While TCEQ officials may believe their EtO risk factor is “safe,” few of them will have to deal with the consequences of their proposal and live with constant exposure to ethylene oxide. It’s time that the TCEQ thinks less of themselves and more about the holistic health of the state.
The Sierra Club will submit its final comments to the TCEQ in a joint NGO technical and legal effort on September 26, also demanding that the TCEQ retract their statements to the EPA for their irresponsible and flawed proposal.
What is Ethylene Oxide?
Ethylene oxide is an explosive hazardous air pollutant (HAP) under Title III of the federal Clean Air Act. It is classified as a known human carcinogen. It’s a flammable, colorless, odorless gas often used to make other chemicals, such as antifreeze, textiles, plastics, detergents, and adhesives. It’s also used as a sterilizing agent for large equipment used in big factories and hospitals and has been linked to numerous, collective health problems -- from headaches to leukemia. Sixty plants in Texas emit EtO, the most of any state (the U.S. has 355 plants), with 38 in the Houston area alone, and new plants and process units are being built to make more ethylene oxide.
This highly toxic chemical raises significant environmental justice concerns in Texas industrial communities where people of color and low-income residents are already overburdened with thousands of pounds of other airborne toxins assaulting their lungs and bodies on a routine basis. The Lone Star Chapter’s own Clean Air Program Director, Neil Carman, continues to emphasize the Texas agency’s lousy track record on environmental justice across the state. A series of Title VI Civil Rights complaints submitted to the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights between 1994-2000, in which Carman was involved, alleged racially disparate treatment of communities of color by the TCEQ’s air permitting program called “skewed” air permits.
How We Got to Now
TCEQ’s Toxicology Division, headed by Michael Honeycutt, submitted a letter to the EPA this past April after the federal agency solicited public comments on their proposed amendments to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP). The EPA had published its own research in 2016 detailing the severe effects that EtO has on human health as a carcinogen in relatively low concentrations, after EtO was not sufficiently accounted for as a threatening, toxic chemical.
Before conducting research for their report, the EPA had not properly regulated EtO for decades due to the historical lack of resources that prevented EPA from properly investigating many hazardous air pollutants, and heavy lobbying pressure from the chemical industry lobby known as the American Chemistry Council trying to downplay this toxic chemical’s health effects. It was not until affected communities, environmental justice groups, and other citizen groups voiced their concerns when many community members, children and adults alike, were falling ill.
TCEQ’s letter is an effort to persuade the EPA to ignore its own extensive internal and external peer-reviewed science, and adopt the TCEQ’s suggested lowered EtO cancer risk factor. Yet TCEQ has failed to seek an external science review of its flawed proposal. The TCEQ is either not accounting for, or ignoring entirely, the negative effects this change would have on children. For example, a 2018 report from The Intercept cites a child in Chicago, who lived on the fence line to an infamous EtO-emitting chemical company, coughing to the point of vomiting and developing a bone cyst. Jane Williams, a Sierra Club volunteer and National Clean Air Team chair also condemned Michael Honeycutt’s proposal, saying, “Rolling back emissions limits on dangerous toxic chemical emissions is a direct attack on the most vulnerable members in our society: our children.”
Who Suffers the Most?
Texas children and communities neighboring petrochemical companies that would be most affected by EtO are already highly vulnerable to other carcinogenic pollutants -- such as benzene and vinyl chloride. Many of these communities are located along the Texas Gulf Coast, including the Golden Triangle, Corpus Christi, and most of the industrial communities in the greater Houston Area. EtO is just one of the many pollutants that cause and aggravate existing respiratory issues, in addition to increasing the risk of cancer. Allowing for an increase of EtO in the air would compound already existing effects of poor air quality on public health.
TCEQ’s Flawed Report
TCEQ’s letter to the EPA cites their own recently published 149-page report entitled Ethylene Oxide Carcinogenic Dose-Response Assessment, which claims that their proposed level of EtO is safe and thus not cancer inducing -- although their risk value is three orders of magnitude weaker than EPA’s, according to scientists at EarthJustice. This means that the TCEQ is basically speculating that there is little to no risk of cancer or harm at much higher levels of exposure to EtO. TCEQ’s suspect risk assessment also uses a males-only occupational study based on the risk of lymphoid cancer to support its higher EtO value as safe, excluding breast cancer as a significant and known risk of EtO exposure. It also does not account for other negative health effects besides cancer, such as reproductive problems and respiratory tract irritation.
In terms of studying EtO’s carcinogenic risks, the TCEQ has not conducted an epidemiologic study of EtO’s health effects in any community where EtO is being produced and TCEQ has not requested the Texas Department of Health Services to assist in performing an epidemiologic study of EtO. TCEQ appears to exclude environmental justice issues because such considerations are not addressed by the risk assessment. TCEQ also ignores the cumulative risks since citizens are exposed to multiple air toxics at the same time living next to large petrochemical complexes at Channelview and other Houston Ship Channel communities.
Consequences of Weaker Limits
If the EPA adopts this proposal, the lowered EtO risk factor would exacerbate issues of environmental inequality. A report published in 2017 by the Clean Air Task Force and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) shows that “African Americans are exposed to 38 percent more polluted air than Caucasian Americans, and they are 75 percent more likely to live in fence-line communities than the average American.” Youth are especially at risk, with African American children experiencing higher rates of asthma due to pollution related causes. Many of these predominantly African-American fence line and downwind communities that are located in or near industrial areas, such as Orange County, also experience remarkably higher rates of cancer than other parts of the state.
The EPA’s original assessment of EtO from 2016 used data and research from air quality testing in lower-income communities which are largely home to people of color, and live closely to these pollution-emitting facilities. The communities that benefited from the IRIS setting at a higher EtO standard are the very people who will be harmed if the TCEQ’s proposal is accepted by the EPA. The progress that was made over the past few years would be lost.
The Catch
IRIS numbers, unfortunately, are only guidelines for states to determine their own emission levels, and are not legally binding by the EPA. The IRIS EtO factor could be cited, however, in citizen complaints against chemical companies. If the EPA lowers its IRIS factor, communities and citizen groups would have weaker evidence supporting claims that chemical plants in Texas are emitting harmful amounts of EtO.
Adopting a weaker EtO emission standard -- after the EPA themselves already determined one that is more sound -- would only ignore and worsen the reality that many Texas’ fence-line and downwind communities are forced to live in. It would mute citizen voices that wish to speak out against companies that are damaging their communities.
A Troubling Pattern
This is not the first incident where TCEQ refused to acknowledge ethylene oxide as a threat to Texas communities. In May 2018, Sierra Club, along with other environmental organizations, and hundreds of local residents told the TCEQ that the air pollution permit for what could be the world’s largest proposed ethane cracker was too weak and would not protect public health or the environment. The TCEQ addressed those concerns but made no changes to the draft permit have been made in response to public comment.
TCEQ’s Toxicology Division leader, Michael Honeycutt, is notorious for making unscientific claims, such as “pollutants are not nearly as harmful as the evidence suggests,” being especially outrageous since he rarely visits impacted communities in Texas and does not live in one. Another point of distrust might be that Scott Pruitt, former EPA administrator under Trump and fervent anti-environmentalist, deemed Honeycutt a “wonderful scientist.”
The TCEQ’s desire to weaken ethylene oxide exposure standards is reflective of their already flawed air permitting system and highlights their pro-polluter tendencies, which do not protect public health effectively. The Sierra Club urges the TCEQ to consider the health of children and the dozens of vulnerable communities in Texas -- and abandon its dangerous proposal on ethylene oxide.
No community should be forced to live in pollution. [The comment period is now over.] Click here to submit your comments to Michael Honeycutt today to tell the TCEQ scrap their EtO proposal to the EPA. Your comments could help protect the lives of thousands of people across the state from the threat of ethylene oxide. You can also submit your comments directly through the TCEQ website.
The Sierra Club joined the following organizations on the joint letter: Environmental Integrity Project, Community In-Power & Development Association, Environment Texas, Air Alliance Houston, and Texas Campaign for the Environment.