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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">FUELING DISSENT</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">How the oil industry set out to undercut clean air</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">After casting doubt on climate change for decades, industry consultants have turned their attention to air pollution</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Illustration by Robert Fresson</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">by Jie Jenny Zou</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tom Dart of Guardian US contributed reporting</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>December 12, 2017</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">SAN ANTONIO, Texas ― On sunny days, when his classmates at St. John Bosco Elementary School run out to play, Gabriel Rosales heads to the school nurse for a dose of Albuterol. The fine mist opens his airways, relaxing the muscles in his chest. Without it, recess could leave the 9-year-old gasping for breath. He gets a second dose at the end of the day before heading home.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Over the past year, Gabriel’s<b>&nbsp;asthma</b>&nbsp;has worsened. Visits to the emergency room, shortened trips to the park, and reliance on inhalers have become his new norm. “It got to the point where I couldn’t even leave him with anybody,” said his father, Gabe, who works as a consultant to the National Association of Public Employees, a workers’ advocacy group, and a seasonal field director of the Bexar County Democratic Party. “One time he almost looked blue.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gabriel’s health is deteriorating alongside air quality in San Antonio, where oil and gas development, a hotter climate and a growing population have combined to spell misery for a city that once boasted clean air compared to other Texas metropolitan areas. Part of the problem lies southeast of the city in the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">&nbsp;Eagle Ford Shale, a 400-mile-long hub of hydraulic fracturing that unleashes microscopic particles and smog-causing,<b>&nbsp;ground-level ozone.</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">The state’s environmental regulator — the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"> Texas Commission on Environmental Quality</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);"> — hasn’t made things better.&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">In fact, it’s followed in the footsteps of Big Oil’s biggest lobby, the</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">&nbsp;American Petroleum Institute,&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">which has forestalled progress on</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">&nbsp;ozone for decades.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">&nbsp;Using consultants also hired by</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">&nbsp;API,&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">the commission has spent millions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to undercut scientific evidence linking particulate matter and ozone with bronchitis, asthma and premature death.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">Read more about API's history of climate denial and its ties to the White House ]</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Air quality is the new frontier for climate-change skeptics long tied to API.</b>&nbsp;The institute has fueled uncertainty on climate by producing what critics call misleading scientific and economic studies. Now, by attempting to discredit established research on ozone and fine particles, API and its cadre of doubters are trying to undermine the Clean Air Act — the landmark U.S. law credited with saving millions of lives. Working in concert with other free-market groups, they’re taking their message to Capitol Hill. API officials did not grant interview requests from the Center for Public Integrity.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Residents of San Antonio’s low-income, mostly Latino neighborhoods — like Hillcrest, where Gabriel Rosales lives — bear the brunt of poor air quality even if they aren’t in ozone hot spots, said Mario Bravo, an outreach specialist with the Environmental Defense Fund. “They have less access to health care,” Bravo said. “They have less access to transportation to get to the health-care providers.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">‘A lot like climate’</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In June, two peer-reviewed studies trumpeted a conclusion at odds with years of solid science: fine-particle pollution long linked to premature death and chronic illness isn’t as dangerous as health advocates contend. If true, the findings would call into question health benefits claimed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has set ever-tightening air-quality standards.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There was a catch, however. The articles — which were published within a week of one another — appeared in Critical Reviews in Toxicology and Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, two journals favored by industry consultants alleged to promote pay-for-play science.<b>&nbsp;And both studies were funded by API</b>, a trade group that has spent $40 million since 2013 to lobby Congress on topics ranging from taxes to global warming.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Twitter</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>“Our study is published...air quality does not kill. $600 million of EPA junk science up in smoke,” climate-change skeptic and Donald Trump acolyte Steve Milloy tweeted in June, linking to the Regulatory Toxicology article</b>. During a congressional luncheon a month later, the former coal executive took credit for conceiving the study before turning it over to friend,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">S. Stanley Young, and two other statisticians</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, who authored the final article. No mention of Milloy’s involvement is made in the publication.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Read more about how Big Oil is trying to sow skepticism of science among judges ]</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Some of the same data were used in the Critical Reviews article published by Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr</b>., which also disputed the link between fine particles and mortality. Cox, a biostatistician from Colorado,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">&nbsp;started consulting for API in 1988.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Cox disclosed that his paper “benefitted from close proofreading and copy-editing suggestions from API” but denied in an interview that his findings were influenced.<b>&nbsp;In November, he was named the next chair of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, drawing criticism from groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists.</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The science on particle pollution, much like the science on global warming, is exhaustive and widely accepted, with thousands of studies pointing to serious health implications. The World Health Organization notes that particulate matter “affects more people than any other pollutant,” with effects observed at even “very low concentrations.” The particles — found in automotive and industrial exhaust and smaller than one-fifth of the width of a strand of hair — form a toxic mix with ozone that lodges deep in the lungs<b>. Unlike Cox, most researchers are no longer fixated on whether this form of pollution is fundamentally dangerous; they worry instead about whether it can cause — not just exacerbate — chronic illness.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Attacking the science is one way of undermining the Clean Air Act, said John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which advocates for more protective air-quality standards.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The Clean Air Act is routinely hailed as one of the most cost-effective federal laws,&nbsp;</b>even by business groups.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;In 2015, the EPA estimated that the law will have saved the U.S. economy $2 trillion by 2020 while costing $65 billion to implement.<b>&nbsp;About 85 percent of the act’s benefits come from reducing fine-particle pollution,&nbsp;</b>which raises the risk of early death. Opponents of the law “deny that air pollution is deadly … or even harmful in order to try to pretend that no benefits are delivered,” Walke said.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Steve Milloy</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Milloy’s July luncheon at the Rayburn House Office Building — billed as a “congressional staff and media briefing” — was little more than a plug for his latest book, “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA,”</b>&nbsp;which condemns the “echo chamber of deceptive science” on ozone and fine particles. The event was hosted by Myron Ebell, who chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, a climate-skeptics’ group that began as an alliance of free-market think tanks. “It’s a lot like climate,” Milloy told the audience. “This stuff is pulled out of thin air.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“It’s a lot like climate... This stuff is pulled out of thin air.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Reached for comment, Milloy said the study is not an attack on the Clean Air Act but part of his 20-year effort to expose the EPA’s “garbage-in, garbage-out” air pollution research</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. He denied having any formal ties to API.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“I am very, very disappointed in the American Petroleum Institute and all the oil companies for not defending their products, for leaving the science to people like me,” he said.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Young, who authored the study, stood behind its findings and disputed the idea that industry funding presents ethical conflicts. His study data are publicly available, he said, but the EPA isn’t as transparent. Ebell agreed, accusing the agency of using “junk science” to justify air-quality and greenhouse-gas regulation.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Despite their misgivings about the EPA, all three men have become tethered to the agency. Earlier this year, Ebell oversaw the EPA transition for Trump, leading a group that included Milloy. Young was named to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board in October</b>.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., co-founder of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, complained that such appointments have become all too common.&nbsp; “These people were fringe fanatics and industry stooges fighting on behalf of the industry a propaganda war against science,” he said.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Milloy and Ebell were listed among the authors of a $2 million plan to amplify uncertainty in climate science — as revealed in a 1998 API memo leaked to The New York Times. Both say the memo grew out of an API brainstorming session that never resulted in concrete action, with Milloy calling it “just a big joke.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Years before, API had refuted the very concept of global warming under President Charles DiBona</b>, who joined the institute shortly after a stint as energy policy advisor to Richard&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">Nixon in the 1970s. White House communications show that DiBona regularly met with then-API President Frank Ikard, a close friend of Nixon’s</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, before becoming Ikard’s deputy in 1974.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“You heard that a scientific consensus now exists,” DiBona said during API’s annual meeting in 1996. “This claim is beyond misleading; it is dead wrong.”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;He borrowed an analogy from MIT physicist Richard Lindzen, who likened climate models to Ouija boards. By 2003, a group of scientists funded by API had turned out the first of several studies characterizing the warming trend as a natural phenomenon.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The same year, however, the United Nations was holding its ninth conference on climate change —&nbsp; focusing on how to mitigate warming. In 2001, an international consortium of scientists had delivered its third report on the trend, reaffirming findings that climate change was real and manmade.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Reached by phone recently, DiBona declined to answer any questions about the organization he led for 18 years. Months after retiring from API in 1997, DiBona joined the board of Halliburton</b>, an oilfield-service company then headed by future vice president Dick Cheney. DiBona is now an API honorary lifetime director and an</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;advisory chairman for a mining investment company based in the Cayman Islands.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In recent years, fringe views espoused by API have found a receptive audience in U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas</b>), whose climate-denial credentials rival those of Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Since Smith became chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in 2013, the panel has handed out dozens of subpoenas — many to scientists at regulatory agencies and environmental groups — aiming to debunk climate research.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Smith — whose district includes San Antonio — has opened the committee’s hearing rooms to Cooler Heads Coalition events such as Milloy’s book promotion and briefings that urged the United States to drop out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. In February, he reissued a controversial subpoena to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is investigating ExxonMobil’s historical knowledge on climate change. Since he joined Congress in 1989, Smith’s top campaign donors have been from the oil and gas sector, which gave him at least $764,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Smith did not respond to requests for comment.</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">In 2016, Influence Map, a nonprofit environmental research group, estimated that ExxonMobil had spent about $27 million on “climate obstruction” lobbying and advertising campaigns. That amount was dwarfed by the $65 million API spent on similar efforts, the group found. ExxonMobil is one of the oldest and largest API members.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>‘Tired, old industry argument’</b></div><div><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In July, the House passed a bill targeting what its proponents called “job-killing regulations” — namely, bedrock air-quality standards. Its lead author was&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rep. Pete Olson,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">a Republican from the ozone-plagued Houston area. All but four of the 229 “aye” votes were cast by Republicans, Lamar Smith among them.</span></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Under Olson’s bill, states would have until 2025 to meet the EPA’s latest ozone limit, which was supposed to take effect in October</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. The agency, which is legally required to update air standards to keep pace with evolving science, would be obligated to review rules for pollutants once a decade, as opposed to once every five years.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">The 2017 bill is the latest iteration of a proposal Olson first floated in 2015, seeking to delay regulation of ozone</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. The same day his bill passed, 144 trade groups, including regional offshoots of API, pledged their support in a letter to Congress. Oil and gas interests have been Olson’s top political contributors, donating more than $1 million to his campaigns since 2007. A Senate version of the bill has not come up for a vote.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In an email, Olson’s office wrote that the congressman “believes the Clean Air Act is critically important” but has “fundamental concerns” about Texas’ ability to meet tighter standards. Pollution control, the email said, “can be done rationally and with an eye on our economy.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>By law, the EPA is not allowed to consider cost when setting ozone standards, but that hasn’t stopped API and other industry groups from injecting economics into the policy debate</b>.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Much like scientists for hire, economists have provided API with grist to challenge regulations</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Armed with seemingly authoritative studies from firms such as&nbsp;<b>NERA Economic Consulting,</b>&nbsp;t</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">he institute has recast issues such as action on climate change as reckless moves that could tank the U.S. economy. NERA, whose clients include API collaborators such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Chemistry Council, was co-founded by Irwin Stelzer, an economist who works at the Hudson Institute, a free-market think tank.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Such studies, like the NERA report Trump cited when he announced the U.S. exit from the Paris climate agreement earlier this year, can be “extremely misleading,” often tallying every conceivable cost and ignoring every possible benefit, said<b>&nbsp;Ben Franta</b>, a Stanford University researcher investigating API’s climate activities. Because data underlying these reports are proprietary, Franta said, in many cases they can neither be verified or debunked. What’s left are unsupported arguments: “New ozone rules could be the most expensive ever,” reads an API webpage linking to dozens of NERA findings.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has taken a tack similar to API’</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">s.&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Since 2013, the <b>TCEQ</b> has paid NERA more than $870,000 f</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">or economic research on ozone — a topic the firm studied earlier for&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">API. More than $2.2 million in taxpayer funds have also been spent on contracts wit<b>h Gradient — a consultancy previously hired by API to question the benefits of a stricter ozone limit.</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;The TCEQ declined to comment on this story but on its website describes its mission as protecting the “state’s public health and natural resources consistent with sustainable economic development.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Anne E. Smith, a managing director at NERA,&nbsp; did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment. She was among several industry-friendly voices at a 2015 TCEQ ozone workshop in Austin led by Michael Honeycutt,&nbsp; the agency’s director of toxicology. Other speakers included Gradient scientists, the editor of&nbsp;<b>Critical Reviews in Toxicology,</b>&nbsp;industry toxicologist Michael Dourson and air researcher&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Robert Phalen, known for saying the air “is a little too clean for optimum health.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The group’s findings were later referenced by Honeycutt at a House Science Committee&nbsp;</b>hearing, where he argued against a tighter EPA ozone standard. Honeycutt said the risks posed by the pollutant were “small” and any change could discourage people from “outdoor exercise.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Speakers at the Austin workshop have risen to prominence in the Trump administration. This fall, Honeycutt, Anne Smith, Dourson and Phalen were all named to key EPA science positions as either advisers or staff. Their fringe views on ozone — championed by API — have alarmed public-health advocates and run counter to the EPA’s own findings. The agency strengthened its ozone standard in 2015 after reviewing more than 1,000 new studies.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Economics has long figured into API’s strategy to derail&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">ozone rule</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">s. In 1971, the newly formed EPA set the ozone standard at 80 parts per billion,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">but in 1979 took an unexpected U-turn and weakened it to 120 ppb — angering industry and environmentalists alike. The latter called the reversal scientifically indefensible and accused the EPA of prioritizing economics over health.&nbsp;<b>API promptly sued the EPA, with President DiBona claiming the relaxed standards would still cost “billions of dollars without significantly improving the quality of the environment or the health of the public.”</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Spurred by lawsuits from the American Lung Association that compelled it to update air standards based on the latest science, the EPA reverted to its original 80 ppb ozone limit in 1997.</b>&nbsp;The cap is now at 70 ppb, though even that number may not be protective enough, as some research has found health effects at 60 ppb.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Nonetheless, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt — a former Oklahoma attorney general with deep ties to oil and gas — tried to keep the 70 ppb standard from taking effec</b>t</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. He backed off on the delay after 16 state attorneys&nbsp; [teAm BLUE] general sued the agency in August. In a lawsuit filed this month, however, environmental groups accused the EPA of failing to enforce the rule.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Pruitt had put forth what Dr. Greg Diette — a lung specialist at Johns Hopkins University who has testified in favor of tighter ozone standards — calls “a tired, old industry argument. They say, ‘It’s going to put us out of business,’ and it doesn’t,” Diette said. “All this stuff always comes down to who has to pay.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>But not all costs are economic. High ozone days are the hardest for Diette’s patients. “It can be terrifying — it’s the sensation of not being able to breathe,” he said. “Some feel as if they're going to pass out. Some feel as if they're going to die.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Asthmatics can do little more than hide indoors in an air-conditioned environment. The only other option, Diette said, is to move.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Relocating isn’t possible for the Rosales family of San Antonio, who are uninsured and struggling to keep up with the cost of Gabriel’s medications. The air he breathes is expected to degrade further as oil prices rebound and&nbsp;<b>drilling picks up in the Eagle Ford.</b></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wheeler on exit in bloomberg fluff sez proud of interagency coop and workflows, but got bought pest hacks to greenlight pfas, then got OMB vought to fasttrack it?!</font></div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/01/12/cancer-trump-administration-epa-carcinogens-regulations/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://theintercept.com/2020/01/12/cancer-trump-administration-epa-carcinogens-regulations/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>the war on the war on cancer</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no pix no lnx many no graf</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sharon Lerner</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">January 12 2020,&nbsp;</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WHEN ANGELA RAMIREZ was 38, she felt a slight pain in her chest. At first she thought she had pulled a muscle, but when it didn’t go away, Ramirez went to her doctor, who diagnosed her with stage 2 breast cancer. A mother of three and a parent educator in a local public school in Lake County, Illinois, Ramirez had to undergo a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, and five follow-up surgeries.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eight years since the diagnosis, her family is still recovering. Because of complications, Ramirez is awaiting several more reconstructive surgeries. Her daughter Ada, now 15, was recently diagnosed with PTSD, in part, Ramirez thinks, because she spent much of her childhood worrying that her mother wouldn’t survive. And her husband is working 80 hours a week to cover medical expenses and lost income. “Cancer changes your whole life,” she said recently.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ramirez used to think of her ordeal as random bad luck — an inexplicable series of genetic mutations that just happened to derail her life. But that changed in 2018, after she learned that she both lived and worked near two facilities that were emitting a c<b>ancer-causing chemical called ethylene oxide.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Two years earlier, the Environmental Protection Agency released an assessment of ethylene oxide performed by a small division of the agency known as IRIS, which crunched numbers showing that exposure to ethylene oxide caused elevated rates of tumors in the brain, lungs, uterus, and lymph systems.</b>&nbsp;The technical report from IRIS, which stands for the Integrated Risk Information System, changed the classification of ethylene oxide, an odorless gas used to make other chemicals and sterilize medical equipment, from probably carcinogenic to plainly carcinogenic to humans. Based in part on several studies showing that female workers exposed to ethylene oxide had higher breast cancer rates, the report calculated a safety threshold that was 30 times more sensitive than previous estimates. Combined with agency data about local emissions, the&nbsp;<b>new threshold allowed the EPA Office of Air and Radiation</b>&nbsp;to identify the census tracts where residents were at increased risk of cancer from breathing ethylene oxide.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">As Ramirez could plainly see on the EPA’s interactive map, the cancer risk was elevated both where she lived and, even more extremely, at the office where she worked for several years before her diagnosis, which was less than a mile from one factory that emitted the carcinogenic gas and less than three miles from another. The news was like a missing puzzle piece. “I had always found it kind of strange that I was the only one in my family who ever had cancer,” said Ramirez, who had moved to the suburbs from Chicago in 2005 in part because she wanted to be closer to nature.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ramirez still suffers from chronic back pain and weakness. But the realization that her cancer may have resulted from emissions from the local factories has caused a different kind of suffering. “Every time I open the windows I think about it now,” she said. “I’m so angry. My kids at 2nd and 3rd grade shouldn’t have had to wonder whether their mother was going to die.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Angela Ramirez's neighborhood is seen in this photo. The neighborhood in Waukegan, Ill., is located in a census tract that is at high risk for cancer. Jan. 2, 2020. Pat Nabong for The Intercept.Construction at Medline's facility in Waukegan, Ill. is underway on Jan. 2, 2020. In May 2019, Medline submitted a proposal to build new equipment that would control air pollution, after they came under fire for emitting ethylene oxide, a gas linked to cancer. Pat Nabong for The Intercept.]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Left/Top: The Ramirez's neighborhood in Waukegan, Ill., is part of a census tract that is at high risk for cancer. Right/Bottom: Construction at Medline's facility in Waukegan, Ill. is underway on Jan. 2, 2020. In May 2019, Medline submitted a proposal to build new equipment that would control air pollution, after they came under fire for emitting ethylene oxide.Photos: Pat Nabong for The Intercept]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);"><b>The chemical industry also reacted strongly</b>&nbsp;to the reports on ethylene oxide. In September 2018, after the National Air Toxics Assessment pinpointed the areas affected by the chemical, the American Chemistry Council, or ACC, a trade group that represents U.S. chemical manufacturers, asked IRIS to change its assessment of ethylene oxide. Dow Chemical, the biggest producer of ethylene oxide in the country and the second biggest in the world, also disputed the EPA’s assessment.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Now, political appointees at the EPA are engaged in what appears to be an end-run around the agency’s own science</b>. While IRIS, which is staffed by career scientists, hasn’t officially backed away from its 2016 report, the<b>&nbsp;Trump EPA recently announced that it would not be calling for the level of pollution reductions IRIS laid out during the previous administration,</b>&nbsp;leaving people around the country more vulnerable to the known carcinogen. And that’s only one of the changes made under the Trump administration that promise to weaken protections for Americans’ health, many of which were intended specifically to stave off cancers.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Virtually no sector of the EPA’s work has escaped reversals that will cause disease and death among the U.S. population.</b>&nbsp;The agency scrapped the Clean Power Plan and a rule to improve fuel efficiency standards for cars, depriving the public of not just the climate benefits but also the improvements to air quality and health both would have brought. The EPA rejected its own science in deciding not to ban&nbsp;<b>chlorpyrifos</b>, a pesticide linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental problems in children. Dozens of other EPA rollbacks — including the gutting of the Clean Water Act, the undermining of guidelines on emissions of&nbsp;<b>methane from landfills, the loosening of restrictions on toxic air pollution from industrial facilities, the disbanding of a panel on air pollution — will have dire health consequences, as will the dramatic reduction in the enforcement of environmental laws.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The erosion of these protections may leave Americans at greater risk of all kinds of health effects, including fertility issues, birth defects, and neurodevelopmental problems — all of which have been linked to chemical exposure. But among the most devastating of Trump’s legacies will be an increase in cancers.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s Cancer Gang</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">With the election of Donald Trump, a small and previously marginalized group of toxics apologists suddenly and unexpectedly took control over health and environmental regulations in the United States. Considered too fringe, too craven, and too fact-averse for mainstream politics, this closely connected group had long been dismissed for taking the idea of environmental deregulation well past the point of absurdity. Under Trump, the EPA has begun executing some of these extremists’ schemes to undercut the federal government’s ability to protect the public from life-threatening toxic chemicals.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Way back in 1996, a lawyer named Christopher Horner working for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company</span>&nbsp;came up with an ambitious plan to fight back against scientific studies linking cancer to secondhand smoke. Such studies, he realized, were based on the private health data of thousands of individuals. And without that data, scientists would be unable to prove a connection between cigarette smoke and cancer. Imagine if the government required that the data used for regulations be public. If that were the case, none of the crucial private health information used by scientists would be usable. Problem solved!</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);"><b>Horner, who worked at the firm then called Bracewell & Giuliani</b>, recognized that the approach had “global applicability to industry” beyond tobacco and could make it nearly impossible to regulate a wide variety of cancer-causing chemicals and pollution. Within a few years, a group funded by the Koch brothers tried to use the strategy to undermine the Clean Air Act, demanding that researchers produce their data so a pivotal study could be repeated.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>That attempt to destroy air pollution protections ultimately failed, and the idea hovered on the sidelines until 2014, when a few Republican House members introduced the “Secret Science Act.”</b>&nbsp;Because most members of Congress recognized the gambit as a bald attempt to subvert science — then-Sen. Barbara Boxer called it “insane,” Sen. Bernie Sanders dismissed it as “laughable” — the bill didn’t come close to becoming law that year or the next, when it was introduced again. Even in mid-2016, the only support for the idea came from the fringe.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But with the election of Donald Trump later th<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">at year, the prospects of the “secret science” scheme — and others hatched over the years to help free industry of what it saw as profit-hampering regulations — suddenly became deadly serious.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Trump, who had already been dismissive of science, named Horner and others interested in undermining environmental protections to his EPA transition team and then staffed the agency with political appointees who used to work for the industries they would be regulating. In April 2018, then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt proposed a rule based on the “secret science” plan, and Horner’s wildest dreams of dismantling environmental and health regulations were set to become reality.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), speaks to members of the media after signing the Affordable Clean Energy Rule at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, June 19, 2019. President Donald Trump is scaling back sweeping Obama-era curbs on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants burning coal, his biggest step yet to fulfill his campaign promise to stop a "war" on the fossil fuel. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesEPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, center, speaks to members of the media at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., on June 19, 2019. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The war on cancer was meant to help banish a disease that by 1970 had become the second-leading cause of death in the United States</b>. The Environmental Protection Agency, created that year, was part of the government’s assault on the rising tide of cancer cases. For some contaminants, such as asbestos and chemicals used in dye-making, the link to cancer was already clear. Scientists were beginning to understand that even tiny amounts of certain chemicals could alter cells, setting off a series of mutations that grow into cancerous tumors. The hope was that the agency could counter increasing cancer rates by limiting environmental exposures.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>Yet 50 years after the federal government took up arms against cancer, the disease is still the second-leading cause of death.</b>&nbsp;Even though cigarette smoking, the leading cause of cancer in the 1970s, has declined sharply, the American cancer rate has actually gone up over the past 40 years. Among children, who are particularly vulnerable to environmental exposures, the cancer rate has risen dramatically, increasing nearly 50 percent since 1975</span>.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>During that time, environmental exposures have been mounting. More than 140,000 chemicals and pesticides have been introduced since 1950. Even though the vast majority have not been evaluated for safety, 5,000 of them are made in such great quantities practically everyone is exposed to them. Yet most of the government spending on cancer has remained focused on treating the disease rather than preventing cancer by limiting exposure to carcinogens, such as pesticides and other environmental contaminants.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">graf:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Left/Top:&nbsp;<b>Federal political contributions by members of the American Chemistry Council,&nbsp;</b>including parent companies and individual employees, 2008 - 2019. Compiled for The Intercept by MapLight. Right/Bottom: Federal political lobbying expenditures by members of the American Chemistry Council, including parent companies and individual employees, 2008 - 2019. Compiled for The Intercept by MapLight.Graphics: Soohee Cho/The Intercept</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);"><b>Since the first major law that attempted to regulate toxic chemicals passed in 1976, chemical companies have spent billions of dollars on lobbying</b>. The member companies of the American Chemistry Council have spent more than $1.4 billion on lobbying and $77.8 million on political contributions since 2008, according to an analysis by MapLight for this story. The ACC by itself has spent $103 million on lobbying. Though staggering, these numbers are a small fraction of the trillions generated by chemical sales over that same period.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Throughout its 50-year existence, the EPA has faced the daunting task of regulating industries that are far better resourced than the agency</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">&nbsp;But the effort to rein in powerful companies, which has been met with varying degrees of success under previous administrations, has been largely abandoned under Trump. The EPA, now headed by a former coal lobbyist and run by other former lobbyists, executives, and lawyers from polluting industries, has set about undoing health protections, some of which were specifically designed to prevent cancer.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump, who recently tried to take credit for a 2017 dip in cancer mortality rates and announced that he would be “curing childhood cancer very shortly,” at a rally in Cincinnati last August, presumably isn’t interested in actively causing disease and death. But his eagerness to please the polluting chemical and fossil fuel industries that support him comes at the expense of American lives</b>.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Mess in Texas</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For ethylene oxide, the chemical that Ramirez was exposed to, the road to deregulation passes through Texas. It was there, in the summer of 2018, that regulators led by&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">state toxicologist Michael Honeycutt</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;began working with the producers of ethylene oxide on their own standard for the chemical.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Honeycutt, who has overseen chemical assessment for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;since 1996, is known for his extremely industry-friendly approach to chemicals</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Until this administration, Honeycutt made his name fighting the EPA, challenging the limits the agency tried to place on emissions of chemicals, particularly those released by the oil and gas industry. He has argued that particulate air pollution, which causes lung cancer and other diseases, can help people live longer. And working with his longtime colleague and fellow toxicologist Michael Dourson, Honeycutt loosened state protections on dozens of chemicals — rollbacks that were encouraged and welcomed by chemical manufacturers. Now, under Trump, Honeycutt’s Texas agency has essentially become a shadow EPA and he has assumed a national role in cancer policy.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The assessment of ethylene oxide that Honeycutt oversaw and the TCEQ released last year no doubt pleased the companies that make the chemical — not least because it appears to have been written by them. In June 2018, before issuing a new safety limit for ethylene oxide, Honeycutt and members of the TCEQ’s toxicology staff met in Austin with Joanna Klapacz, a toxicologist from Dow; Bill Gulledge, a senior director at the American Chemistry Council; and three scientists from Exponent, a consulting company paid by the ACC to help fend off regulation of the chemical, among them two toxicologists named Abby Li and M. Jane Teta. Representatives of Shell, BASF, and Balchem, which together with Dow released more than 200,000 pounds of ethylene oxide over the previous six years, joined the conversation by phone, according to emails of TCEQ staff released in response to a FOIA from the Sierra Club.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dr. Mike Honeycutt is an Air Toxicologist for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the world's second largest environmental agency. RALPH BARRERA/ AMERICAN-STATESMANTexas state toxicologist Michael Honeycutt. Photo: Ralph Barrera/Austin American-Statesman]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the meeting, a presentation from the American Chemistry Council recommended adopting estimates of safety thresholds from a paper written by Ciriaco Valdez-Flores, a Texas-based consultant who received funding from both the ACC and the Ethylene Oxide Sterilization Association. The TCEQ had considered — and rejected — the paper in an assessment of ethylene oxide it released less than two years earlier because, it said, Valdez-Flores hadn’t captured all the cancer risk from ethylene oxide. Although an EPA summary of the 2016 IRIS report on ethylene oxide characterized its confidence in the&nbsp;<b>breast cancer data as “particularly high</b>,” and noted that the breast cancer component “is based on over 200 incident cases for which the investigators also had information on other potential breast cancer risk factors,” the Valdez-Flores paper didn’t include the breast cancer studies in its evaluation. And in a presentation to the group, Teta also argued against the inclusion of the breast cancer data.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Gulledge, who manages the ACC’s panel on ethylene oxide, emailed TCEQ toxicologist Jessica Myers after the meeting and offered to draft the assessment of the chemical for the state agency. “Thank you for hosting us this week,” Gulledge wrote. “We are working on several ‘white papers’ on the risk assessment modeling and our alternative approach that should be ready in the next month or so with the goal to have a draft risk assessment manuscript ready shortly thereafter.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Asked about the email, Tom Flanagin, director of product communications for the American Chemistry Council, denied that the group drafted the risk assessment for the TCEQ.</b>&nbsp;“Mr. Gulledge is referring to a separate, independent effort … for publication in a peer reviewed journal. TCEQ acted independently in preparing their risk assessment.” Flanagin did not explain why Gulledge would be communicating with TCEQ about a purportedly separate, independent effort. Ryan Vise, director of external relations for the TCEQ, also denied that the ACC drafted or edited the state agency’s assessment. Exponent did not respond to requests for comment.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Yet the proposed ethylene oxide standard that TCEQ released this summer included many of the elements that the ACC and its scientific consultants recommended at the Texas meeting. The state agency omitted the breast cancer studies and adopted the paper by Valdez-Flores as its key study, just as the industry scientists had recommended.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And minutes from a meeting of the Ethylene Oxide Sterilization Association held the next month also indicate that the chemical industry, led by Teta and Li, who were both at the Texas meeting, drafted the state’s assessment of the chemical. According to the minutes, first reported by the Chicago Tribune, the assessment, which would provide an alternative to the IRIS ethylene oxide value, was funded and led by the industry groups. “Jane Teta and Abby Li (Exponent) will be leading” the recasting of the assessment to the industry’s liking, the minutes explained, and “TCEQ has indicated its receptiveness to considering an alternative to the IRIS value.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The result of this collaboration between the ethylene oxide industry and Texas was a proposed standard that was 3,500 times weaker than the IRIS threshold.&nbsp;</span>The Texas number was also 50 times less protective than the standard the state had released only two years earlier. While Texas offered no scientific reason for weakening its 2017 standard, regulatory developments can help explain the oddly timed reassessment: the EPA’s recognition of ethylene oxide as a carcinogen in 2018 had led to public pressure on companies that emit the gas, which had in turn led to the industry group to ask the TCEQ to issue an alternate standard.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Just as the ACC has done, the Texas agency also attempted to justify its new number by arguing that IRIS’s calculations couldn’t be correct because the body produces some ethylene oxide on its own — an idea dismissed by scientists who are not supported by the ethylene oxide industry.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They make a big deal of endogenous exposure and say that’s why EPA numbers can’t be meaningful,” said Jennifer Jinot, a toxicologist who worked for EPA for 26 years, 12 of which she spent working on the IRIS assessment of ethylene oxide. Jinot described the TCEQ’s focus on purportedly natural levels of the chemical as “disingenuous” and said it was just one of several tricks the state agency used to make the chemical appear safer than it actually is.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Texas has done something completely unreasonable,” said Jinot. “They’re just low-balling the whole thing.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">In an emailed response to questions, Dow spokesperson Ashley Mendoza acknowledged that Joanna Klapacz attended the 2018 meeting at TCEQ, but noted that “she was not part of the technical presentation.</span>” The email also said that “Dow has continued to improve our [ethylene oxide] emission reduction as part of our own sustainability goals. As science advances, our ongoing collaboration with other manufacturers and multiple agencies continues to ensure maximum human safety while delivering products consumers want and need.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The TCEQ responded to questions for this piece with an email saying that its assessment of ethylene oxide was “on the side of the best available science.” The email also said that the more protective ethylene oxide standard, which the state agency issued in March 2017, was never intended to be permanent, but instead was “to be used until a thorough multi-year systematic review and dose-response assessment could be conducted under the extensive TCEQ toxicity factor guidelines.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The proposed safety level could have a dramatic effect on people in Texas</b>,&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">where at least 27 facilities emit more than 48 tons of ethylene oxide every year. At one of these facilities, a Huntsman Petrochemical Plant in Conroe Texas, the EPA estimated the cancer risk due to the release of ethylene oxide and other chemicals to be&nbsp;<b>3,000 in a million, according to a risk assessment report the agency released in December. Nationwide, the average risk of cancer from air pollution is 32 in a million.</b></span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Texas standard could also weaken protections for people far beyond Texas, since states often consider one another’s regulations when issuing their own. “It could mess with the legal landscape globally,” said Tracey Woodruff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco school of medicine who studies how chemical exposures affect health. “Even if other states don’t adopt Texas’ levels, they tend to average them.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scenes from Freeport, Texas on Wednesday, December 18th, 2019. Todd Spoth for The Intercept.Dow Chemical’s plant can be seen just beyond homes in Freeport, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2019. Photo: Todd Spoth for The Intercept]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>While Honeycutt was once one of EPA’s main opponents, the Trump administration is now relying on his agency’s industry-biased assessment of ethylene oxide to guide the federal government’s approach to the carcinogen.&nbsp;</b>IRIS spent years calculating its safety threshold for ethylene oxide and noted in its 2016 report that scientists have been studying the chemical’s “DNA-damaging properties” since the 1940s. Yet in early November, the EPA indicated it would not be calling for the reduction of emissions as much as the IRIS report would suggest is necessary. Instead, the EPA’s proposed rule, which it is required to finalize by March, calculated risk levels that were six to nine times weaker than those issued in 2016. An explanatory document released by EPA cited the Texas estimate as well as the request for correction from the American Chemistry Council and attributed its decision to change its safety level to “uncertainties” in the science.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The people who will be affected by the weakening of ethylene oxide protections are disproportionately poor and nonwhite</b>, as the EPA’s own analysis shows. While the U.S. population overall is 12 percent African American, the areas with elevated cancer risks due to ethylene oxide are 21 percent African American, according to the document the agency released in November. Latinos are also at greater risk of exposure, making up 18 percent of the U.S. population and 31 percent of those living in areas with elevated cancer risk due to the chemical.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those demographics aren’t unusual. While black and Latino people produce less pollution, people of color have a higher burden of pollution and are more likely to live near industrial facilities. Penny Dryden, who grew up near several polluting plants in the Rosegate section of Wilmington, Delaware, was for years unaware of the disparity. Dryden, 62, has had cancer three times. The first, breast cancer, was diagnosed when she was just 19. But this seemed to be a fact of life in her mostly African American neighborhood. Many of her friends and relatives as well as both of her parents had cancer.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2018, a facility near Dryden’s home that makes chemicals used in antifreeze and some processed foods released so much ethylene oxide into the air that the nearby Delaware Bridge had to be temporarily shut down. That was a temporary inconvenience to commuters, but for people who live within a three-mile radius of the plant — 52 percent of whom are people of color, and 31 percent of whom are below the poverty level — the chemical poses an ongoing health threat.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the cancers have taken a toll, Dryden still considers herself lucky. “Lots of people here have died of it, whole families, so many of my friends,” said Dryden, who has come to recognize and fight against the extra burden of both pollution and disease that are clustered in several communities of color in Delaware. And while she has no experience living in a pollution-free area, she feels certain the people making decisions that affect pollution levels around the country have no idea how it feels to live with polluted air. “The people in D.C. don’t go into communities like ours,” said Dryden. “They probably have never heard of Rosegate.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For people like Dryden and Ramirez, who live near the facilities around the country — more than 100 — that emit the carcinogenic gas, the weakening of the ethylene oxide standard will result in even greater risks of cancer. “By undermining the way risk assessments are done, Texas has allowed these plants to put out more pollution because it’ll look like it’s safe when it’s not,” said Woodruff, the reproductive health professor. “They’re resetting the bar to allow more pollution going out into the world.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Children will also disproportionately bear the burden of this additional pollution</b>. As the EPA has pointed out, children may also be especially vulnerable to the mutagenic effects of ethylene oxide — as they are for other carcinogens. Simon Strong came to recognize kids’ particular vulnerability after his son, Oliver, died suddenly in June 2015. An exuberant 12-year-old who played saxophone and tended goal for his soccer team, Oliver was diagnosed with leukemia a week after he complained of his first symptom: a headache. He died just 36 hours later, leaving his parents bereft and filled with questions.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oliver-1578521871Oliver Strong. Photo: Courtesy of Simon Strong]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We were there with his oncologist in floods of tears, and I said, ‘What caused this?’ and she just burst out, ‘It’s the environment,’” Strong remembered recently. He had no idea what she meant and had never thought much about cancer before Oliver’s illness. But after his son’s death, Strong, a reporter turned investigator, began researching the causes of pediatric cancer. He read with dismay about the alarming numbers of soccer players, particularly goalies, who have developed cancer; about the connection between cancer and Roundup, a weed killer he had used liberally in the family’s backyard in Florida; and about several pediatric cancer clusters in his home state.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The problem, as he learned, was also worsening. While pediatric cancer rates were increasing overall, there had been a particularly large jump in the number of cases in infants and children under 5. Yet the government seemed to be doing little to understand what was causing these cancers or to prevent them.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So Strong launched a project along with the Baylor College of Medicine to collect information about the environmental exposures of children with cancer from their families. It’s work he wishes the federal government was doing. But as Strong’s urgency about the problem was growing, the Trump administration was going in the opposite direction, unraveling the little work that was being done on the issue.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Indeed, in May, the EPA decided to pull its funding for a network of centers that had researched the effects of various substances, including chemicals, on children</span>.&nbsp;<b>One of those research hubs, the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Leukemia and the Environment at Berkeley, had found that exposure to pesticides, traffic emissions, tobacco smoke, and solvents are associated with childhood leukemia, the most common children’s cancer</b>. Staff there were continuing to research the environmental causes of the disease and to educate parents and physicians, according to the physician and epidemiologist who directs the center, Catherine Metayer. “There is still so much work to do,” said Metayer. But the center lost the $1.5 million per year it had been receiving from the EPA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Barring intervention from Congress, the last of its federal money will be spent by this summer. “After that, our work will have to stop,” she said.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Known Killers</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">The closure of the pediatric environmental health centers is only one of many backward steps we’ve taken in our decades-long battle against cancer and cancer-causing exposures. The first major one came after the EPA attempted to use the&nbsp;<b>Toxic Substances Control Act to ban asbestos in 1989</b>. The ban was exactly what the EPA and the chemicals law were created to do: protect Americans from a substance that had been known for decades to cause cancer. But after the agency began the process, asbestos mining and manufacturing companies sued.&nbsp;<b>A court struck down most of the government’s ban in 1991 and, since then, the agency has been wary of taking on regulatory battles it might not win. As a result, the EPA has not regulated a single chemical under the law in the almost 30 years after the 1991 ruling</b></span><b>.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>So, while 67 countries have already banned asbestos, we’re still importing it. And last year, the Trump EPA decided — against the advice of its own scientists — to continue to allow its use.&nbsp;</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a statement, an EPA spokesperson wrote that the agency “along with our state partners, is covering ALL bases under our legal authority to protect people’s health from asbestos exposure.” The spokesperson went on to explain an April 2019 rule that allows the agency to restrict or prohibit the use of products containing&nbsp;<b>asbestos. But she declined to say why the EPA had chosen not to ban the substance altogether, as its own scientists and attorneys had recommended.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>While the continued use of asbestos has deadly consequences, causing an estimated 39,000 deaths in the U.S</b>. each year, it is just one of the chemicals the Trump administration is now in a position to greenlight. In 2016, Congress tried to improve our abysmal record on chemicals by fixing the broken Toxic Substances Control Act. The update of the law aimed to bring about greater protections by requiring the EPA to identify and restrict the most dangerous substances.<b>&nbsp;But under Trump, the opposite is happening&nbsp;</b>— and the opportunity to fix chemical regulation, 40 years in the making, has instead turned into another massive step backward. The assessment process, begun in the Obama era, is being carried out by an administration that is friendlier to the chemical industry than any other administration in history.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“<b>There is no daylight between this EPA and what the big chemical companies want,</b>” said Daniel Rosenberg, director of the federal toxics program for the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“Whatever the term is for government by corporation, that’s what we’ve been living under for three years.</span>” Lots of small decisions are involved in implementing the new law, including the choice of which chemicals to assess, what sources of information about them to use, and how to quantify the risks they pose. “And these details are all essentially being worked out by companies like Dow and DuPont and Chemours,” said Rosenberg. “It’s the worst-case scenario.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asbestos is now one of 10 compounds the EPA began assessing in 2016 under the new law. In August, the EPA announced that it was considering assessing an additional 20 chemicals and added another five in September. How these chemicals are assessed will affect Americans’ exposure levels and ultimately their risks for a range of health outcomes.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scenes from Freeport, Texas on Wednesday, December 18th, 2019.Todd Spoth for The Intercept.Dow Chemical’s Freeport plant is the largest chemical production facility in the western hemisphere. Photo: Todd Spoth for The Intercept]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Having the Trump administration at the helm during a once-in-a-generation reassessment of toxic pollutants is especially disastrous for the effort to protect Americans from cancer.</b>&nbsp;Of the 35 chemicals the EPA is now scrutinizing under the updated TSCA, 19 are widely considered by researchers to be carcinogenic. While only a tiny exposure can set off disease, more than 135 million pounds of these carcinogens were released in this country between 2014 and 2018, according to the most recent data from the EPA. And how dangerous they are found to be may ultimately impact federal and state limits on their use.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Obama administration officials were scrupulous when they began the assessment process back in 2016</b>. “They clearly said we have to look at all the ways people are exposed because if we ignore even a single pathway, that can result in the difference between acceptable and unacceptable risk,” said Eve Gartner, an attorney who directs the toxics program at Earthjustice. But when Trump appointees came in to replace them at the EPA, that changed. Nancy Beck, who had been trying to convince the EPA to narrow the range of exposures it considered in chemical assessments when she was director of regulatory policy for the American Chemistry Council, joined the EPA in April 2017 and remade the rule exactly as industry wanted it.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just as the environmental advocates feared, the first of the assessments under Beck’s rule, which were released over the past several months and will likely be finalized within the coming year, have minimized the risks posed by chemicals. “We’re seeing massive exclusions of known pathways for exposure,” said Gartner. “<b>EPA is finding that chemicals that are universally understood to present massive risk are fine.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>Environmental groups, including Earthjustice, NRDC, and the Environmental Defense Fund, sued the EPA</b>, arguing that the agency was wrong to rule out certain pathways of chemical exposures. In November, a federal appeals court agreed with them. If the ruling stands, EPA will be forced to consider exposures to chemicals through uses that have been phased out, which will affect the assessment of asbestos, for example, and<b>&nbsp;PFOA, an industrial contaminant found in drinking water, even though the chemical is no longer used in the U.S.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Excluding consideration of certain exposures is just one of the ways industry insiders at the EPA appear to be underestimating the harms of toxic substances. “The specifics vary from one chemical to another, but by ignoring certain evidence, EPA uses the risk assessment process to put its thumb on the scales and come out with a result that is weaker and less health protective than it would otherwise be,” said Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. “Each time we see one of these assessments, there are ways in which the science has been played with.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Denison pointed to the EPA’s recent handling of a likely carcinogen called&nbsp;<b>1,4-dioxane</b>, which is used to make other chemicals and forms spontaneously in some shampoos, cosmetics, and cleaning products. In 2013, IRIS set a safety threshold for the chemical based, in part, on studies showing that female mice exposed to it developed cancerous tumors in their livers. Yet when the EPA released its draft risk assessment of 1,4-dioxane under the new TSCA law in June, “they conveniently omitted those tumors,” said Denison. “They removed the most sensitive endpoint and as a result came up with five-fold less protective risk value.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Another dishonest technique the EPA has used to deem chemicals safe is to change safety thresholds when chemicals don’t meet them.</b>&nbsp;Although the 1963 Clean Air Act mandated that the lifetime cancer risk to an average individual should be no greater than 1 in a million, since 2008 the agency has used a much less protective risk standard for carcinogens in the air: 1 in 10,000. NRDC sued in an effort to get the EPA under George W. Bush to stick with the more protective number, but a three-judge panel that included Brett Kavanaugh ruled against the environmental group in 2008. “They gutted the law and set the course for the next two decades,” said John Walke, the NRDC attorney who argued the case. When testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018, Kavanaugh lied about the case, describing it as one in which he’d ruled for environmentalists.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Although previous administrations have used the 1-in-a-million standard when evaluating the safety of toxic chemicals, the Trump administration recently began using the 1-in-10,000 standard,&nbsp;</span>Denison said. In several recent reports issued under the updated chemicals law, including a draft assessment of the deadly paint stripper methylene chloride, the EPA inexplicably used this lower bar for determining when a cancer rate for workers is unacceptable.&nbsp;<b>“It looks to me like some scientists were doing the number-crunching, and somebody came up and said, ‘Yikes, look at all this risk. How do we make it go away?’” said Denison.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The EPA insists that it “is following the legal process in TSCA, which ensures that our risk evaluations are transparent and include a robust review of the available science,” according to an emailed statement from an EPA spokesperson. The statement also said, “The draft risk evaluations released so far represent the agency’s preliminary conclusions on these chemicals. EPA goes beyond what TSCA requires by peer reviewing the risk evaluations it releases in order to increase public transparency in the risk evaluation process and receive expert feedback on the science that underlies the risk determinations. If EPA’s final risk evaluations find there are unreasonable risks associated with these chemicals, the agency will propose actions to address those risks within the timeframe required by TSCA.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scenes from Freeport, Texas on Wednesday, December 18th, 2019.Todd Spoth for The Intercept.Dow’s Freeport facility released more than 200 air pollutants in 2017 and has violated its permits in every quarter of the past three years, making it a high-priority violator of the Clean Air Act. Photo: Todd Spoth for The Intercept]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A Polluter’s Paradise</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>There may be no better place to see the consequences of the unraveling of chemical regulation than in Texas.&nbsp;</b>Home to roughly two-thirds of the nation’s petrochemical industry and a fast-growing number of factories that make plastic and its feedstocks, Texas is a hub for the production of carcinogenic compounds as well as a leader in the movement to weaken regulations of them. For years, Texas has been a polluter’s paradise. As the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries have exploded throughout the state, the TCEQ’s Honeycutt has presided over an easing of restrictions on their emissions even as his staff has been reduced.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>With 1.7 million new cases estimated for 2019 in the United States, cancer is a particular problem in Freeport, Texas.&nbsp;</b>Rates of Hodgkin lymphoma are elevated in this small town on the Gulf Coast, as are cancers of the liver and bile duct, lung, stomach, and nasal cavity and middle ear, according to a report that the Texas Department of State Health Services quietly released in 2018.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The report makes no mention of pollution as a possible cause of the elevated number of cancer cases, yet Freeport is home to the largest chemical production facility in the western hemisphere</b>: 12,800 acres of holding tanks, machinery, canals, deep-water ports, and pipelines, owned by Dow. Alongside it are chemical production facilities owned by other companies, including BASF, Shintech, Huntsman, and the&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">Olin Corporation, the largest chlor-alkali producer in the world,&nbsp;</span>which bought part of its Freeport manufacturing site from Dow in 2015.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Dow’s Freeport plant produces more than 40 billion pounds of chemicals and other products, including the components of much of the world’s plastics.</b>&nbsp;In the process, the plant emits hundreds of toxic chemicals. The facility released more than 200 air pollutants in 2017 and has violated its permits in every quarter of the past three years, making it a high-priority violator of the Clean Air Act. Between 2015 and 2018, the&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">complex emitted more than 3 million pounds of unpermitted air pollution on top of what it was allowed to release</span>, according to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cancer-2-08-1578686568On-site manufacturing releases of 18 of the 19 carcinogens currently being reviewed by the EPA under the revised 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act. All data drawn from the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory, 2014 – 2018, as reported by manufacturers. Locations include facilities within 50 miles. Data does not include releases at waste disposal/recycling facilities or on-site underground injection wells. Graphic: Soohee Cho/The Intercept]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Among the pollutants being released by Dow in Freeport are 11 carcinogens that are now being assessed or considered for assessment by the EPA under the new toxic chemicals law,</b>&nbsp;according to EPA data. Of those chemicals, five have been shown to increase levels of the very cancers that are elevated in Freeport. Over the past five years, the Dow plant released more than 221,000 pounds of these five chemicals, including 1,2-dichloropropane, which causes bile duct cancer and is a probable cause of cancer of the nasal cavity and inner ear; 1,3-butadiene, which has been shown to increase rates of stomach cancers (and was recently released in an explosion at another chemical plant on the Texas coast); 1,1,2-trichloroethane and 1,1-dichloroethane, both of which have been linked to liver cancer in mice; and 1,2-dichloroethane, a probable carcinogen that has been linked to stomach, liver, and lung cancers.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">But initial reports that the EPA recently released on the chemicals it’s investigating omit information that the agency has in its own databases about where and in what quantities these chemicals are produced, which companies make them, and how they’re used. As a result, most people in Freeport — and other polluted communities — do not realize that the industrial facilities near them are releasing dangerous amounts of these carcinogens. Also, because they omit this critical information, the assessments themselves may not reflect the true dangers posed by these substan</span>ces.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Dow has done little to address the prevalence of cancer in the area, though the company did sponsor a “Sparkles and Spurs” fundraiser in 2018 to help buy a CT scanner for the CHI St. Luke’s Health cance</b>r center in Brazosport, Texas, which is just a 15-minute drive from the Dow Chemical plant. Some residents call it the “Dow Cancer Center” because it was built on land donated by the giant chemical company. The evening of food, fun, and “foot stompin’” country music helped the center purchase the CT scanner, which the hospital is still using to diagnose new cancer cases.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Although they are more likely to get certain cancers, residents of Freeport — where the median household income is less than $37,000 a year — may have a difficult time getting care at the local hospital. “The Dow cancer center won’t take indigent patients,</b>” said Melanie Oldham, a Freeport resident and physical therapist who said that she has worked with hundreds of clients in the area who have had cancer. “People who don’t have good insurance end up having to drive back and forth to either Galveston or to MD Anderson, which is an hour away.” Many of them are workers at the Dow plant, according to Oldham. “These are great jobs until you’re 50 or so,” she said. “That’s when a lot of my patients develop cancer.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Physical therapist, Melanie Oldham, in her Freeport, Texas home, Wednesday, December 18th, 2019.Todd Spoth for The Intercept.Physical therapist Melanie Oldham at her home in Freeport, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2019. Photo: Todd Spoth for The Intercept]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Oldham pushed for years to get the state to conduct the cancer incidence study it released in 2018. The results confirmed her hunch that cancer rates in Freeport continued to exceed state and national rates. But the vindication brought no relief. “Dow could prevent a lot of these cancers,” said Oldham, “but instead it’s ‘Let’s put money into the local cancer center.’ It’s all about PR for them.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The CHI St. Luke’s Health-Brazosport Hospital emailed a statement in response to inquiries from The Intercept saying, “CHI St. Luke’s Health is committed to serving all in our community including the poor and vulnerable. We have a consistent stewardship policy across our division that outlines our process for caring for underserved and vulnerable patients who can’t afford healthcare services.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Texas Department of State Health Services said it has not investigated the environmental causes of the increased number of cancer cases in Freeport.</b>&nbsp;“Our protocol is to continue to monitor the situation and re-evaluate as more data becomes available,” department spokesperson Chris Van Deusen wrote in an email to The Intercept. In a separate email, Van Deusen wrote that the health department could not provide any earlier reports on cancer rates in Freeport because it doesn’t retain them after four years.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Clarence Thompson, cancer came as no surprise. Many of the people he worked with at the Dow plant in Freeport have already died of the disease. Thompson, who was employed by a company that contracted with Dow, did pipe-fitting, welding, and machine operation at the Texas plant for more than 25 years and worked there when a cluster of brain cancer cases was identified among workers. Back then Thompson was in near constant motion, according to Eve Thompson, his wife of 43 years. “Even when he’d come in from work, he’d keep working, mow the yard, or tinker with something,” she recently recalled. “I did not marry a lazy man.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clarence Thompson stands outside of his Brazoria, Texas home assisted by a walking stick, on Wednesday, December 18th, 2019.Todd Spoth for The Intercept.Clarence Thompson stands outside of his home in Brazoria, Texas, assisted by a walking stick, on Dec. 18, 2019. Photo: Todd Spoth for The Intercept]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The front yard of Clarence Thompson’s home in Brazoria, Texas, Wednesday, December 18th, 2019.Todd Spoth for The Intercept.Willie Leona Willow applies lotion to her father, Clarence Thompson’s face prior to going outside, at Clarence’s home in Brazoria, Texas, Wednesday, December 18th, 2019.Todd Spoth for The Intercept.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Left/Top: The front yard of the Thompson’s home in Brazoria. Right/Bottom: Thompson's daughter, Willie Leona Willow, applies lotion to her father's face prior to going outside.Photos: Todd Spoth for The Intercept]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At 68, Thompson still wants to work, but these days he can barely walk. He has trouble remembering things and difficulty eating, and suffers from near constant pain in his lower back. At first Thompson thought his symptoms were just part of growing older. But Eve suspected that something was wrong. And when she took him to a doctor in June, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells. In the months since, Thompson, who is almost 6 feet tall, has lost 50 pounds and has been hospitalized with several life-threatening infections.&nbsp;<b>Thompson said he was exposed to several carcinogens while working at the Dow plant, including ethylene oxide and asbestos, both of which have been linked to multiple myeloma.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet even as his vitality is draining away, Thompson worries about the dangers that chemicals from the plant may pose both to other workers and neighbors.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Residents of Freeport are not the only people living dangerously near facilities that emit the carcinogenic chemicals now under scrutiny from the EPA. An analysis performed for this story by Material Research, an environmental data analysis company, shows that the chemicals are being released in particularly large quantities in eight hubs for th<b>e production and disposal of plastic. Among the most polluted hotspots are industrial areas in Lake Charles and Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Port Arthur and Houston, Texas; El Dorado, Arkansas; and Louisville and Calvert City, Kentucky.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many people living in these highly polluted communities don’t know what chemicals they’re breathing, let alone the dangers they present, according to Wilma Subra, an environmental consultant who has worked in all of these hotspots. “But when you go there and say these are the chemicals and these are their known human health impacts, people start saying Oh, I have that, I have that, and I have that,” said Subra. “Most of those facilities have been there two or three generations and people are able to tell you not just what cancers they have but what cancers their parents and aunts and uncles had.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More Leukemia, Please</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">While some carcinogenic chemicals that have already gone through the IRIS process are getting a more forgiving assessment through TSCA, the EPA is also refusing to release one IRIS report — on formaldehyde — even as it performs a new assessment of the chemical</span>. Formaldehyde, used in building materials, glue insulation, and fabric, has been widely recognized as a cause of leukemia. In 2018, IRIS’s assessment of the chemical, which was expected to confirm the link to the blood cancer,&nbsp;<b>was ready for “imminent release,” as then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt told the Senate.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Formaldehyde already accounts for more than half the nationwide cancer risk from air pollution.</b>&nbsp;Because it’s so widespread — more than 93 million pounds have been released in the U.S. since 2014 — and because its safety threshold is now 30 years old and evidence of its carcinogenicity has mounted during that time, updating the number IRIS calculated would likely increase the official cancer risk in many places around the country and drive up the number of census tracts where the cancer rate is officially problematic. But in April, EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler announced that the agency would not be releasing the IRIS report on the chemical, which had been in the works for more than a decade.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The IRIS assessment was one of 11 the agency withheld from publication, according to a March report from the Government Accountability Office</b>. (In its statement, the EPA described these reports as “reduced from the IRIS workflow.”) Wheeler said that the EPA would instead assess formaldehyde through the new toxic chemicals law, thus indefinitely delaying the bad news about formaldehyde and cancer.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">It’s worth noting that the Trump appointee who now heads the EPA’s Office of Research Development where IRIS assessments are produced,&nbsp;<b>David Dunlap, used to work for Koch Industries. Georgia-Pacific Chemicals, a subsidiary of Koch, is one of the country’s largest producers of formaldehyde</b>. Before working for Koch, Dunlap handled regulation for the Chlorine Institute, a trade group to which Dow and Olin belong. Dunlap also served on the ACC’s formaldehyde panel, which has disputed the link between the chemical and leukemia.&nbsp;<b>Nancy Beck, the political appointee at the EPA who rewrote the rule determining how the agency would assess chemicals, also worked for the ACC. And David Fischer,</b>&nbsp;the person who replaced her at the agency after she left this summer, is an ACC alum as well, having spent a decade working there on the TSCA.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Honeycutt, who gave the keynote address at the ACC’s “premier” regulatory conference in 2018,</b>&nbsp;also has strong ties to the trade group. Even though he remains in Texas, Honeycutt has had an outsized impact on chemical policy beyond the state and is in close touch with EPA staff. Before the TCEQ publicly released its ethylene oxide assessment,<b>&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>Honeycutt&nbsp;</b>sent it to Anne Idsal, a former TCEQ employee who is now running the EPA’s Air Office,</span>&nbsp;<b>which is steering the agency’s policy on ethylene oxide. A Texan with close ties to the oil and gas industry, Idsal’s father owned the ranch where Dick Cheney shot a Texas attorney while hunting quail.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Honeycutt also emailed an explanation of the assessment to Erin Chancellor, another former TCEQ employee who now heads the EPA’s regional office in Texas</b>, telling her to “hold it close.” Texas’s top toxicologist may have written about ethylene oxide to other EPA staff and industry representatives, but the Texas agency has refused to provide some documents in response to a<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Sierra Club public records request specifically asking for communications between TCEQ staff and a long list of interested parties, including the American Petroleum Institute, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, Chevron Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Formosa, Georgia-Pacific, and Dow/DuPont</span>. In September, after the Sierra Club pushed to get the documents the TCEQ had withheld, the attorney general of Texas ruled in its favor.&nbsp;<b>In response, the TCEQ took the unusual step of suing the attorney general rather than complying with the decision. That case is now pending.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asked about Honeycutt’s emails to Idsal and Chancellor, the TCEQ’s spokesperson wrote in an email that “TCEQ routinely interacts and share information with EPA.” His email also said that the state attorney general didn’t rule on whether certain documents “fall within exceptions to disclosure under the Texas Public Information Act” and that the only way to get him to address the question was to sue.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Meanwhile, Honeycutt is also making changes that will affect how all cancer-causing chemicals are treated throughout the country.</b>&nbsp;In 2017, then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt named Honeycutt&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">chair of the agency’s influential&nbsp;<b>Science Advisory Board</b></span>. The group is supposed to provide scientific advice to the administrator, but under Trump it has been stacked with industry apologists. This summer, Honeycutt, along with fellow advisory board members from Dow Chemical, Exxon Mobil, and the American Chemistry Council, quietly began proposing profound and lasting changes to the EPA’s cancer guidelines.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Throughout the EPA’s almost 50-year history, the agency has held that there is no safe level of a carcinogen. But Honeycutt and his colleagues on the advisory board have proposed reversing that assumption. “They want to flip it so there can be safe levels of cancer-causing chemicals,”</b>&nbsp;said Jen Sass, a senior scientist at NRDC, who sees the move as a ruse for allowing companies to freely release pollutants. “Their presumption is that low levels of carcinogens aren’t harmful and might even be good for you. And industry wants to define low level as whatever level you’re exposed to.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an emailed response to questions about the cancer guidelines, a spokesperson for the agency wrote, “The EPA is currently considering the SAB member’s individual comments as well as those provided by the public as they consider next steps for this project.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because the nation’s cancer guidelines are rewritten very infrequently — the most recent version was published in 2005 — Sass fears that the new ones will have an enduring impact. “Guidances like this last for decades,” she said. “I don’t know how this could be undone later.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[A white substance resembling steam billows out of Vantage's factory in Gurnee, Ill. on Jan. 2, 2020. Vantage is one of the factories in Lake County that emits ethylene oxide, a gas known to cause cancer. Pat Nabong for The Intercept.Steam billows out of Vantage’s factory in Gurnee, Ill., on Jan. 2, 2020. Vantage is one of the factories in Lake County that emits ethylene oxide. Photo: Pat Nabong for The Intercept]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Making America Sick Again</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Other hard-to-reverse plans that could result in increased cancers rates throughout the country are also quietly moving ahead. On December 31, the deregulatory dream of tobacco industry attorney Christopher Horner took another step closer to becoming national policy.</span>&nbsp;<b>While Trump was preparing to ring in the new year at Mar-a-Lago with Rudy Giuliani, Honeycutt released an analysis of the proposed secret science rule — now rebranded “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” — on behalf of the EPA’s science advisory board.&nbsp;</b>The EPA now has to answer several questions the board posed in that document.&nbsp;<b>Once it is finalized, the rule will have to undergo a 60-day comment period. But after that, the once pie-in-the-sky scheme is likely to become the law of the land.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">If and when it does get finalized and survives the legal challenges it will certainly face, the secret science rule will be even more crippling to health-based regulations than Horner first envisioned.</span>&nbsp;His original idea was to require that studies used to make regulatory decisions be reproducible — which sounds fine in theory until you understand that they are often based on confidential private health data of thousands of individuals. And an earlier version of the EPA’s proposed rule called for placing these restrictions only on certain studies. But the EPA amended the proposal last year to require that all raw data and models underlying regulatory decisions be made available for reanalysis, with exceptions possible only on the administrator’s whim.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The requirement would mean that even science that was used to guide past regulations may be up for grabs</b>. The EPA’s 2016 ethylene oxide assessment was partially based on breast cancer incidence data that contained confidential personal information, so under the proposed secret science rule that data could be ruled illegitimate. The rule could also undercut the utility of all the data that Simon Strong is collecting in honor of his son. Because that information will be collected in accordance with standard privacy protocols, it wouldn’t be considered in regulatory decision-making.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">And the EPA could be prevented from basing any regulation on studies of cancer clusters like the one near the Dow plant in Freeport, Texas. “The way you show a cluster is to go to a community and enter their confidential health information and compare that to other areas,” said Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of dozens of groups that oppose the proposed rule. “But you wouldn’t be able to release that raw data because it’s confidential.</span>”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The rule could render other groundbreaking science useless for protecting public health, too, such as studies showing the link between air pollution and lung cancer, between smoking and various cancers, or between the industrial contaminant PFOA and testicular and kidney cancer.</b>&nbsp;The change would mark a profound shift both for the U.S. government and for the American people. “It’s saying what’s important is no longer the public interest but the industrial interest,” said Rosenberg. “Cancer is the most obvious and feared sign of ignoring public interest. And this will lead to more cancer.”</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/30/texas-petroleum-chemical-plant-explosion-and-our-petrochemical-collective-suicide" open="open" sans="sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Texas Petroleum Chemical Plant Explosion, And Our Petrochemical 'Collective Suicide'</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/30/texas-petroleum-chemical-plant-explosion-and-our-petrochemical-collective-suicide" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/30/texas-petroleum-chemical-plant-explosion-and-our-petrochemical-collective-suicide</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">teqc says no problem w/ air</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...Since the explosion, the&nbsp;<span class="caps" style="">TCEQ</span>&nbsp;has stated that its air monitoring indicates no human health concerns, even though&nbsp;its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tceq.texas.gov/response/tpc-incident/tpc-port-neches-plant-fire" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">website warns</a>&nbsp;that “the incident is causing the release of&nbsp;chemicals called volatile organic compounds (<span class="caps" style="">VOC</span>s). Elevated levels of&nbsp;<span class="caps" style="">VOC</span>s from this facility are odorous. Short-term exposure to high concentrations of&nbsp;<span class="caps" style="">VOC</span>s can cause&nbsp;eye, nose, and throat irritation, shortness of breath, headaches, and nausea.”</font></div><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
Sharon Wilson, Texas coordinator of Earthworks, thinks that looking to the Texas Department of Environmental Protection for help&nbsp;isn’t a good bet considering its track&nbsp;record.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="dquo" style="margin-left: 0px;">“</span>The Texas oil and gas and petrochemical facilities have one disaster after the other, driving the globe further into climate crisis and causing local communities intense health&nbsp;impacts,” she told me following the incident. “The&nbsp;<span class="caps" style="">TCEQ</span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<span class="caps" style="">EPA</span>&nbsp;cannot regulate existing facilities yet they continue to permit more fracking and more oil and gas&nbsp;infrastructure. It's past time for Texas to stop permitting new oil and gas and rapidly transition to clean renewable energy,” Wilson said.

“I woke up this morning tired, depressed and scared. I cannot be the only person terrified of this disastrous path we’re on,”&nbsp;Angela Blanchard, a Houston-based long-term disaster recovery expert and Brown University senior fellow, told me in an email.&nbsp;She is known for her work as head of the nonprofit Baker Ripley, that helped countless people&nbsp;after Hurricane Harvey by rapidly opening&nbsp;shelters.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although she has been committed to developing solutions for community challenges that the rest of the country will face&nbsp;due to sea level rise from climate change, she didn’t offer any of the optimistic, uplifting thoughts she usually dispenses.&nbsp;

Instead she concluded, “The plant expansions continue at a record pace. We are committing a kind of collective&nbsp;suicide.”&nbsp;</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><div><a href="https://www.texasobserver.org/rick-perry-exports-his-pay-to-play-politics-to-ukraine/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.texasobserver.org/rick-perry-exports-his-pay-to-play-politics-to-ukraine/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11/13/19</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>it&nbsp;appears that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.texasobserver.org/tag/rick-perry/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">Rick Perry</a>&nbsp;exported his pay-to-play politics from the Texas governor’s mansion to the notoriously corrupt&nbsp;</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Ukrainian oil and gas sector,&nbsp;</b>where, as President Donald Trump’s energy secretary, he has played an outsized role in opening up the industry to private investors.</font><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Associated Press&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/6d8ae551fb884371a2a592ed85a74426" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">reported</a>&nbsp;on Monday, two of Perry’s longtime political patrons won what could be an immensely profitable drilling contract on a sprawling patch of land owned by the Ukrainian government.</font></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Per the AP, Perry traveled to Ukraine to attend the inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky in May. During the trip, Perry urged Zelensky to appoint all new members to the advisory board of the country’s&nbsp;<b>massive state-owned natural gas company, Naftogaz,</b>helpfully giving him a list of recommended energy advisors.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the top was Michael Bleyzer, a silver-maned&nbsp;<b>Ukrainian</b>-American who has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/The-anti-Putin-Houstonian-tangled-in-the-Ukraine-14515890.php#" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">made a name for himself</a>&nbsp;in Houston as an eccentric oil and gas investor. He also happens to be a longtime benefactor of Perry’s political career.</span></font></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the meeting with Zelensky, the energy secretary emphasized his friendship with Bleyzer. A week later, Bleyzer and his business partner Alex Cranberg, also a longtime Perry backer, filed a bid to drill on a government-controlled plot. They were ultimately awarded the contract despite offering several million dollars less than the only other bidder.</font></p><section class="clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><aside class="pull-quote centered" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 60px; margin-top: 25px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The revelations that Perry engaged in what looks to be a classic example of political cronyism should be unsurprising to those familiar with Governor Goodhair’s tenure.</font></span></aside></section><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 2017, Perry has played the role of international salesman for the American energy industry, particularly as an enthusiastic hawker of liquified natural gas, which he famously dubbed “freedom gas.” But as one of the Trump administration’s so-called “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/10/15/770482694/wh-replaced-pro-ukraine-staff-with-three-amigos-congress-reportedly-told" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">three amigos</a>” who have led the United States’ diplomatic efforts in Ukraine, Perry is now embroiled in the impeachment inquiry into the president. He refused to comply with House Democrats’ subpoenas for documents related to his meetings with the Ukraine president and has declined to testify before committee members leading the impeachment investigation. Reports of his donors’ receiving a lucrative drilling contract in Ukraine now only heightens the scrutiny on Perry.</font></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The revelations that Perry engaged in what looks to be a classic example of political cronyism should be unsurprising to those familiar with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2011/08/the_5_funniest_things_molly_ivins_said_about_rick_perry/" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">Governor Goodhair</a>’s tenure.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Over his 12 years running Texas, he developed a reputation as a brazen purveyor of pay-to-play politics, shamelessly installing his biggest political donors in powerful positions of public trust.</span></font></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Of the 4,000 jobs that he filled during his gubernatorial career,&nbsp;<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rick-perry-fourth-political-appointments-campaign-donors/story?id=14324227" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">more than a quarter</a>&nbsp;of them went to political donors—many of them woefully unqualified. From 2001 to 2010, those appointees gave Perry&nbsp;<a href="http://info.tpj.org/reports/pdf/Perry%20Patronage2010.pdf" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">more than $17 million</a>, about 20 percent of his total haul, according to Texans for Public Justice.</font></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In turn, those donors were treated kindly by the Perry government. In 2011, Texas billionaire&nbsp;</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Harold Simmons, who had pumped $1.2 million into Perry’s coffers, got his radioactive waste dump permit&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-31/perry-s-friends-in-texas-discover-donations-dovetail-with-state-contracts" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">greenlit</a>&nbsp;by Perry</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">’s appointees on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;despite objections from some staffers.</span></font></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Perry also used massive economic development slush funds to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/us/politics/21donate.html" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">shovel money back</a>&nbsp;to his donors. In 2010, the&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Observer&nbsp;</i><a href="https://www.texasobserver.org/slush-fun/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">found</a>&nbsp;that 20 of the 55 companies that received grant money from Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund—a state warchest for corporate economic incentives—had contributed to either his campaign or the Republican Governors Association that he helmed.&nbsp;</span>Those companies had a combined $2.2 million in political contributions and received a windfall of $175 million in taxpayer-financed incentives. More than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/rick-perrys-energy-grants-in-texas" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">$16 million</a>&nbsp;from his new Emerging Technology Fund was given to Perry’s major donors. These programs have notoriously&nbsp;<a href="http://info.tpj.org/watchyourassets/enterprise4/ConJob.rpt.pr.pdf" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">little accountability</a>&nbsp;when it comes to job-creation metrics, often falling far short of original promises. One $30 million grant went to an energy group that&nbsp;<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/95448/rick-perry-texas-economic-development-funds" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">never existed</a>.</font></p><section class="clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><aside class="pull-quote centered" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 60px; margin-top: 25px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In hindsight, it was a small miracle that Perry made it this long without getting stuck in the swamp.</font></span></aside></section><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bleyzer and Cranberg—currently embroiled in Perry’s latest scandal—have deep ties to Texas and Perry. In 2009, then-Governor Perry appointed Bleyzer to the advisory board for the Emerging Technology Fund, his new tax-incentive fund for startup ventures. The following year, Bleyzer cut Perry’s campaign a $30,000 check.</font></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Cranberg—an energy investor, longtime GOP mega-donor, and University of Texas at Austin graduate—was appointed to his alma mater’s board of regents by Perry in 2011.</b>That same year, Perry’s campaign paid $16,000 to Cranberg’s company for use of his private luxury jet. During his controversial tenure on the board of regents, Cranberg was seen as “the ringleader of a bloc of regents” who were influenced by outside interests that aimed to “stage an attack on academic research” and coordinate an ouster of UT’s president, the&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Texas Tribune&nbsp;</i><a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2011/06/12/controversial-ut-regent-hopes-to-push-reset-button/" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">reported</a>&nbsp;in 2011. Perry’s former campaign manager Jeff Miller is now a lobbyist for Cranberg’s company and has visited Perry’s Energy Department at least a dozen times, according to the AP.</font></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perry’s office said he is only doing his job as a booster for American energy interests. “What he did not do is advocate for the business interests of any one individual or company,” Shaylyn Hynes, the Energy Department press secretary, told the AP. Bleyzer and Cranberg also denied any wrongdoing.</font></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In hindsight, it was a small miracle that Perry made it this long without getting stuck in the swamp. He was almost able to slip out the back door while he was still in good standing as a member of the federal civil servantry. Last month, just as the Ukraine heat was turning up, he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.energy.gov/articles/secretary-perry-announces-resignation-effective-later-year" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">announced</a>&nbsp;that he was resigning in December.</font></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 29px; padding: 0px; line-height: 34px; width: 700px; max-width: 700px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Helping two political pals secure a massive contract in Ukraine is another example of the pay-to-play approach that served Perry so well in Texas; this time, it’s at a global level. Perry has&nbsp;<a href="https://ua.usembassy.gov/remarks-by-secretary-perry/" target="blank" title="Opens in a new window" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(192, 0, 0);">talked</a>&nbsp;about his aspirations for Ukraine to become “the Texas of Europe.” On the corporate cronyism front, he may just have succeeded.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-31/perry-s-friends-in-texas-discover-donations-dovetail-with-state-contracts"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-31/perry-s-friends-in-texas-discover-donations-dovetail-with-state-contracts</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Business</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Perry’s Texas Friends Find Donations Dovetail With Contracts</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alison Fitzgerald</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Texas billionaire Harold Simmons wanted to build a radioactive waste dump, one data point that would loom large in the permitting process wasn’t required on the application: He is a major donor to Governor Rick Perry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Everybody was aware that this was an important item for the people that were seeking the license as well as for the governor’s office,” said Larry Soward, a Perry-appointed, Republican member of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality at the time of Simmons’s permit application.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Simmons, who has donated more than $1.2 million to Perry’s campaigns, was granted the permit over the objections of some TCEQ staffers concerned the site threatened the Ogallala Aquifer, a water source for much of the plains.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At least three commission employees resigned in protest and Soward voted against the permit. Meanwhile, a state employee who advanced the permit became a lobbyist for the company a month after it was approved.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The permit process for the site, run by Simmons’s company Waste Control Specialists LLC, a subsidiary of the publicly traded Valhi Inc., is one example of how Perry’s donors’ close ties to the governor can influence government grants, appointments and permits.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perry’s Aug. 13 entry into the 2012 Republican presidential primary is casting new light on his record and adversaries are using it to challenge his candidacy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Political Attacks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As Americans look past his swagger, they’ll see he represents more of the same lobbyist-run politics as usual that they despise,” said Rodell Mollineau, president of American Bridge 21st Century, a Washington-based Democratic opposition research group. Perry spokesman Mark Miner didn’t respond to requests for comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jim Henson, project director at the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said it isn’t unusual in the Lone Star State for governors to favor business allies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Perry’s accumulated a long list of these stories,” said Henson. “It’s always discomforting to look at these things, when somebody is on one spreadsheet for campaign donations and then shows up again on another spreadsheet for government contracts or political appointments,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Waste Control Specialists spokesman Chuck McDonald said no favoritism was shown and the review was more rigorous to avoid any appearance of impropriety.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Since the owner of the company is a well-known, longtime, multi-decade contributor to all conservative office holders, that made everybody want to make sure that the process was thorough and complete,” McDonald said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perry Record</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perry has a public record of rewarding his political donors with jobs and state contracts. He has appointed about 4,000 people -- including many donors -- to commissions, boards and other posts, according to Texans for Public Justice, an Austin-based, nonpartisan group that tracks state political donations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last week, Perry named James Lee, president of JHL Capital Holdings, to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Lee, who served on Perry’s 2011 inaugural committee, has donated more than $190,000 to Perry’s campaigns during the last decade, according to Texans for Public Justice.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The governor also appointed Dan Friedkin, chief executive officer of The Friedkin Group, chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission. Friedkin is the third most generous individual donor to Perry, contributing more than $750,000 during the last decade.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Business Grants</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to appointments, the governor controls two business development funds to lure companies to Texas, help them grow, and develop new industries. The funds are administered by the governor’s office and Perry has final approval of all awards.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Texas Enterprise Fund has distributed more than $400 million in grants to 71 companies since 2004, according to a state auditor report. Perry donors have been recipients, including an April 2006 $500,000 grant to Sanderson Farms, whose Chief Executive Officer Joe Sanderson has given Perry $165,000 in campaign contributions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Simmons, chairman of Contran Corp., a holding company that owns Waste Control Specialists, is the governor’s second largest individual donor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to giving more than a million dollars to the governor’s campaigns, Simmons, 80, donated at total of $600,000 to the Republican Governors Association when Perry served in its leadership in 2007, 2008 and 2011, according to data compiled for Bloomberg by the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks political money. As Perry faced both a primary and general election challenge last year, Simmons gave the RGA $1.1 million, funds the organization used to help re-elect its members.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Swift Boat Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Simmons has been a Republican political benefactor for years. He donated $4 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that questioned Democratic nominee John Kerry’s Vietnam war service in the 2004 presidential election. Last year, he gave $1 million to American Crossroads, a group founded with help from former Bush adviser Karl Rove, according to the center.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Simmons’ expansion into radioactive waste storage began in Texas in 2003, when his company urged state lawmakers to pass legislation allowing a private company to build and run a low-level disposal site that would be owned by the state, according to McDonald. Perry signed it into law on June 20, 2003.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three Applications</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A year later, Waste Control Specialists, which ran an existing hazardous waste site in Andrews County in West Texas, applied for three permits to dispose of radioactive waste.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The plan was to build three facilities on the 1,300-acre site in Andrews County. One facility would take waste from federal government national labs and military bases; another would take waste from nuclear plants, hospitals and other sites in Texas and Vermont, as part of a joint disposal agreement; and a third site would dispose of radioactive “by-products” from anywhere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The permits had to be approved by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, whose three commissioners were all appointed by Perry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environmentalists raised concerns because the site was near the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides water for drinking and agriculture from Texas to Nebraska. The engineers and geologists reviewing the application for the commission said it didn’t address those water contamination concerns. Glenn Lewis, part of the TCEQ team that reviewed the permit, called the initial application “laughably deficient.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Texas Water Board</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Lewis, the initial maps from the Texas Water Board -- where five of the six members were appointed by Perry - - showed the proposed disposal site was on top of the aquifer. Waste Control Specialists drilled 560 borings and 450 monitoring wells mapping the water and shared the data with the water board. In 2006, the water board changed the maps, moving the Oglalla’s boundaries away from the Waste Control Specialists’ site.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new maps didn’t resolve the issue for the commission’s engineers and geologists, who were still unsure the facility could prevent radiation contamination of groundwater.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Aug. 14, 2007, the review team wrote a memo explaining their concerns that concluded, “Issuance of a license for the proposed facility cannot be recommended.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two months later, the executive director of the agency, Glenn Shankle, drafted the first permit and recommended commission approval. Two agreed, and Soward voted no.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Permit Opposition</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an interview, Soward said he hadn’t concluded the facility shouldn’t be located in Andrews County. He was opposed because of outstanding questions about the geology and the process.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There was an overriding issue out there that the agency had somehow improperly handled the applications,” Soward said. “I thought this whole matter should be subject to a very open and involved contested case hearing to shine the brightest possible light on these issues.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three members of the technical review team, including Lewis, resigned or took early retirement to protest the permit approval. Soward, who had served as a deputy to Perry when the governor was agriculture commissioner, didn’t seek another appointment to the commission and said he is no longer close to Perry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shankle said he never saw the staff memo that recommended against permit approval, and he said he was wasn’t pressured by the governor to advance the permit. He began talks with Waste Control Specialists about a job during the permitting process. The commission approved the permits six months after he left, he said. A month later, he became a lobbyist for the company.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We agreed that we would not come to an agreement about whether I was going to work with them until after the commission decided on the permit. There was no influence whatsoever in this matter,” Shankle said in an interview.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/hurricane-harvey-trump-epa-response-2630918498.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/hurricane-harvey-trump-epa-response-2630918498.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrea Germanos</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Trump</a>'s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">EPA</a>) and Texas state officials rejected an offer from NASA scientists in 2017 to use their state-of-the-art flying laboratory to evaluate air quality in Houston after Hurricane Harvey,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-nasa-jet-epa-hurricane-harvey-20190305-story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">new reporting by the Los Angeles Times reveals</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is disturbing,"&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JudgeHidalgo/status/1103127288856698880" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">said</a>&nbsp;Lina Hidalgo, judge for Texas's Harris County.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harvey brought&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/08/29/class-its-own-no-storm-us-history-has-unleashed-more-rain-hurricane-harvey" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">historic rainfall,</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/08/28/drones-offer-devastating-footage-damage-harvey-has-wrought" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">catastrophic flooding</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/03/22/full-impact-still-hidden-public-report-details-environmental-assault-unleashed" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">triggered</a>&nbsp;potentially dangerous environmental and public health impacts: Houston's many refineries and petrochemical released pollutants into the air and waters, and area residents began to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/09/12/after-harvey-texas-left-toxic-soup-sewage-spilled-fuel-pesticides-and-more" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">complain</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/06/%20/news/2017/08/29/harvey-triggers-unbearable-pollution-refineries-spew-cancer-causing-chemicals" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">worrisome</a>&nbsp;smells and toxic sights near the facilities, as well as symptoms including headaches. The EPA asserted that the air quality posed no threat.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NASA, it turned out, was in a good position to gather data on air quality in the area with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/aircraft/DC-8/overview.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">its DC-8</a>. The jet, whose ability to ability to gather data dwarfs that of the EPA's&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/air-pollution" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">air pollution</a>&nbsp;plane or the hand-held devices used by Texas state officials, was already set up for testing because of a scheduled six-hour test flight to Lamont, Oklahoma on Sept. 14.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The response to NASA's offer? Thanks but no thanks.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Susanne Rust and Louis Sahagun reported for the Times:</font></p><blockquote style="margin: 1em 0px 1em 25px; border-left: 5px solid rgb(82, 149, 70); padding: 0px 0px 0px 25px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Sept. 9, David Gray, the EPA's deputy regional administrator in Texas and leader of the agency's emergency response, wrote to NASA and Texas officials that he was "hesitant" to have the jet "collect additional information that overlaps our existing efforts" until he learned more about the mission. He noted that media and nongovernmental organizations were releasing data that was "conflicting" with the state and EPA's.</font></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The NASA scientists offered assurances that their fact-finding would not get in the way, but noted that the data would eventually be seen by the public. Texas and the EPA were unmoved.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The state-level response came from director of toxicology Michael Honeycutt, who now heads EPA's Science Advisory Board and is known for&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/pruitt-scientists-key-advisory-panel" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">expressing</a>&nbsp;views well out of the reach of mainstream&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/science/" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">science</a>, such as the idea that lowering ozone would be bad for public health.</font></p><blockquote style="margin: 1em 0px 1em 25px; border-left: 5px solid rgb(82, 149, 70); padding: 0px 0px 0px 25px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Sept. 11, Honeycutt wrote in an email to NASA and EPA officials that state data showed no sign for concern, and "we don't think your data would be useful for source identification while industry continues to restart their operations."
Gray agreed with Honeycutt: "EPA concurs with your assessment and we will not plan to ask NASA to conduct this mission."</font></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Associated Press reporter Frank Bajak&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/fbajak/status/1102955314645790720" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">noted</a>&nbsp;that the new investigation adds weight to his own news agency's previous reporting showing that "Texas environmental regulators had little interest in exposing most post-Harvey industrial contamination."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reacting to the reporting on Twitter, Dr. Chelsea Thompson, a research scientist in atmospheric chemistry, wrote, "It's worth noting that, over a year later now, all of us involved are still stunned by how this played out."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality</b> knew air pollution was one of the unseen dangers of Hurricane Harvey, but according to news reports they deliberately chose not to use every available tool to discover it," added Elena Craft, senior health scientist with Environmental Defense Fund. "Their rejection of NASA's plan to fly a pollution-spotting plane over Houston after the storm is an abdication of responsibility and part of a disturbing trend of willful ignorance."
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Their action," she continued, "caused unnecessary risk to the health and safety of Texas families."</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">resisting epa on ghg/ fracking?</font>

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<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Texas_and_fracking"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Texas_and_fracking</font></a>

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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Texas_and_fracking">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Texas_and_fracking</a>

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<li style=" margin: 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; list-style: disc;"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Texas Legislature has cut the TCEQ’s budget by a third since the Eagle Ford boom began, from $555 million in 2008 to $372 million in 2014. At the same time, the amount allocated for air monitoring equipment dropped from $1.2 million to $579,000.</font></b></li>

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<li style=" margin: 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; list-style: disc;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Eagle Ford boom is feeding an ominous trend: A 100 percent statewide increase in unplanned, toxic air releases associated with oil and gas production since 2009. Known as emission events, these releases are usually caused by human error or faulty equipment.</font></li>

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<ul id="yui_3_11_0_9_1393695513960_39" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 18px;">

<li style="margin: 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; list-style: disc;"><font size="4" style="" face="Times New Roman">Residents of the mostly rural Eagle Ford counties are at a disadvantage even in Texas, because they haven’t been given air quality protections, such as more permanent monitors, provided to the wealthier, more suburban Barnett Shale region near Dallas-Fort Worth.</font></li>

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