EPA Approved a Fuel Ingredient Even Though It Could Cause Cancer in Virtually Every Person Exposed O

[Wicked Blue]

2. I just read the highly redacted EPA report as well as the article. It's frightening.

Chevron and the EPA don't even give the substances names, only numbers. As a group they're referred to as New Chemical Substances (NCSs).

Intended as additives for petroleum-based fuels, NCSs are manufactured from waste plastic -- the plastic bottles and containers you and I diligently recycle.

From the above Guardian article: "Maria Doa, a scientist who worked at EPA for 30 years and once directed the division that managed the risks posed by chemicals, first saw the one-in-four cancer risk for the jet fuel, she thought it must have been a typo. The even higher cancer risk for the boat fuel component left her struggling for words. “I had never seen a one-in-four risk before this, let alone a 1.3-in-1,” said Doa. “This is ridiculously high.”"

Also from the article:

"Another serious cancer risk associated with the boat fuel ingredient that was documented in the risk assessment was also missing from the consent order. For every 100 people who ate fish raised in water contaminated with that same product over a lifetime, seven would be expected to develop cancer – a risk that’s 70,000 times what the agency usually considers acceptable.

When asked why it didn’t include those sky-high risks in the consent order, the EPA acknowledged having made a mistake. This information “was inadvertently not included in the consent order”, an agency spokesperson said in an email."

Sen. Jeffrey A. Merkely, D-Oregon, wrote to EPA administrator Michael S. Regan in April demanding answers concerning the sketchy (my adjective) review of these NCSs.

"Is it true that the EPA streamlined the review of a premanufacture notice for
production of a chemical for use as a fuel in Pascagoula that could emit air pollution so
toxic that 1 in 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer? If so, how did the
EPA justify streamlining that approval? How many times has the EPA ever approved
exposure levels with this level of toxicity?"

Merkeley also wanted to know why the EPA decided to approve these new chemicals under a bio-based fuels program.

https://www.merkley.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/epa_toxics_letter_2023.pdf

What the hell is going on in the EPA that it apparently failed to include the chemicals' risks in its consent order? Is Chevron a special exception to the rules? And why is a fuel additive made from plastics classified as a bio-based fuel? The EPA and Chevron need to provide answers.