Washington — Beyond Plastics, Greenpeace and other groups are urging the Environmental Protection Agency to speed up a review of vinyl chloride's health risks as a first step toward banning it, but vinyl industry officials said they're confident EPA will find the science is in its favor.
At a July 27 news conference outside EPA headquarters, the environmental groups said EPA needs to speed up a decade-old work plan that lists vinyl chloride among 90 legacy chemicals to prioritize for cancer and toxins reviews.
They also pointed to a February train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, where five train carloads of vinyl chloride monomer were burned off, as evidence that EPA should quicken its VCM review under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Two community groups from East Palestine joined the event in Washington, which included a brief visit from a delegation of EPA officials who came out of their headquarters to receive a petition with 27,500 signatures.
Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former regional EPA administrator for President Barack Obama, said the review has been delayed in part because of "the immense political strength of the chemical industry. They have influence no matter who is president.
"But we expect President [Joe] Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris to take this issue more seriously," Enck said.
Vinyl industry officials, however, called the EPA petition a media stunt and said they're confident the agency will not put VCM on its next list of high-risk chemicals to be evaluated under TSCA.
"This week's petition by Beyond Plastics seeking to ban vinyl chloride monomer is a publicity stunt that irresponsibly ignores decades of credible science that shows VCM is safely and responsibly manufactured in the United States," said Ned Monroe, president and CEO of the Vinyl Institute. "Regrettably, Beyond Plastics has chosen to use the tragic events of East Palestine to advance deceptive and disproven claims about our industry that only serve to mislead the public."
At issue is a 2014 EPA work plan that listed VCM among about 90 priority chemicals to review under TSCA, and subsequent EPA actions to further refine that list.
A major rewrite of TSCA in 2016, the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, required EPA to determine which of thousands of chemicals that were legacied in when TSCA first passed in 1976 should have more detailed reviews.
Since 2014, EPA has released lists of about 30 chemicals warranting more detailed reviews, including in 2019 and 2020, but vinyl chloride was not on those lists.
The Vinyl Institute said VCM is safe in its use and manufacture in the U.S.
"VCM is one of the most studied and heavily regulated chemicals in the United States," VI said. "We believe it is highly unlikely that VCM will be in the next round of chemical evaluations by the EPA."
VI said that while it's not entirely clear to the industry how EPA selects chemicals, it was confident VCM was not on previous agency TSCA review lists "primarily because the risk of exposure to the public is extremely low, and the fact that it is a heavily regulated chemical."
The vinyl group said the greatest potential for exposure is with workers in PVC and VCM plants, but it said that since stricter federal regulation and better technology were put in place in vinyl plants in 1975, there have been no known industrial cases of rare cancer caused by VCM exposure.
EPA's 2014 review listed vinyl chloride as a human carcinogen with "high reported releases to the environment," but it also noted that including a chemical on that 2014 list does not mean the agency says it's a risk to human health, only that the chemical should be assessed.
Other government agencies have looked at VCM and noted cancer risks.
In January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its own draft assessment of vinyl chloride, where it noted that both the U.S. National Toxicology Program and the International Agency for Research on Cancer have said it's a human carcinogen, in 2016 and 2012 reviews, respectively.
The Vinyl Institute, however, pushed back strongly on some of the scientific points in the CDC draft analysis, in formal comments it gave the agency.
Enck said the delays in the EPA's VCM review come, in part, from staffing shortages at the agency, but she also said it's a political problem.
"I think EPA has been missing a sense of urgency," she said. "EPA scientists know how toxic this is. East Palestine is Exhibit A as to why EPA needs to have a sense of urgency.
"EPA definitely needs more resources, but what EPA mostly needs is political courage to stand up to the chemical industry," Enck added.
A February study from the Government Accountability Office said EPA has missed deadlines under the 2016 TSCA rewrite because of staffing shortages.
The news conference included speakers from the group Hip Hop Caucus and the head of Beyond Petrochemicals, an $85 million effort launched last year by Bloomberg Philanthropies to stop the expansion of petrochemical and plastics plants in the U.S.
The environmental groups said they were meeting later in the day with Michal Freedhoff, assistant EPA administrator in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, to discuss their petition.